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The latest analytics data just came in and you take a look at the landing page bounce rate with a surprised Pikachu face.
The bounce rate is high and your marketer senses are tingling. You think to yourself, “This can’t be good”.
But before you start panicking and drawing blueprints with solutions, it’s important to understand that high bounce rates aren’t necessarily a bad thing.
Bounce rate is a comparative metric, and as such, it doesn’t give away many valuable insights on its own.
Plus, there’s no universally good landing page bounce rate that you should strive for because it’s extremely industry-dependent.
In this article, we’ll help you come to terms with what a good bounce for your landing page is and how you can improve it.
We also conducted a survey with 40+ marketers and asked them to share some tips about assessing landing page bounce rates.
Our respondents are: B2C Services or Products (41.86%); Agency / Consultant: Marketing, Digital or Media (37.21%); B2B Services or Products (20.93%).
Let’s dive in.
Let’s start at the core of the definition – a bounce is a single-page session.
A visitor is measured as a “bounce” if they arrive on your website and leave without opening a second page.
The bounce rate is the percentage of these single-page sessions compared to the total number of website sessions.
So, if three out of ten people who visit your website leave without going to a second page, the website bounce rate will be 30%.
Most of the time, you should try to lower your website’s bounce rate since you want the visitors to enter your marketing funnel after reading a blog post.
Sure, having a high number of bounces on a blog post is nothing out of the ordinary, but it’s better to get them to open another page as well.
Now, this same definition applies to a landing page bounce rate, but a website bounce rate and a landing bounce rate are two different things.
They’re measured separately and should be analyzed separately as well.
PRO TIP: Want to learn how to properly track Bounce Rate by Blog Post and see which posts are most relevant and engaging to your audience? We got you. Check out this data snack or watch the video below.
The term “high bounce rate” can cause shivers down the spine even for the most experienced marketers.
Your natural response when you see it in your own reports is probably, “okay, how can I fix this?”
But truth be told, high bounce rates aren’t always necessarily a bad thing.
In general, blog posts tend to produce a huge number of bounces. But this could indicate a good user experience, rather than a bad one.
Here’s an example.
Let’s say you search Google for “what is a metric?” and find an article that explains it in detail. You’ll leave the site satisfied that you found your answer, right?
You haven’t clicked on any other pages on the website, but you left it after you found the answer to your question – quickly. In this case, this is a sign of good user experience, and a bounce is totally acceptable.
We can apply this same methodology to landing page bounce rates as well.
So, if the bounce rate on your landing page seems high, it’s not always necessary or crucial to try and minimize it.
On post-click landing pages, there’s only one page you want them to continue their journey to – the “thank you” page after converting.
Let’s say that your landing page bounce rate is around 40-50%, while the website bounce rate ranges from 70-90%.
On paper, the landing page bounce rate looks a lot better.
But, if you find out that the reason it’s lower is that visitors are going back to the homepage through the logo link, this lower percentage won’t be of much help.
When analyzing your landing page bounce rate, remember that a low bounce rate is only good if the page doesn’t include any outbound links in the logo, navigation, footer, etc.
Also, what is considered good is very dependent on the industry and type of page.
For example, a landing page for plumbing services may be very high because people just need to skim through the services and call them. For industries like B2B, these numbers could go lower.
The data from our Benchmark Groups perfectly illustrates what we are talking about. The median value of Bounce Rate for B2B companies is 63.41.
This benchmark was calculated from anonymized data from close to 1000 companies. Are you a B2B company and want to benchmark your marketing performance, including Sessions, Users, Pageviews, Avg. Session Duration, Bounce Rate, and more, against other companies like yours? Join the benchmark group for free.
The median value for B2C companies is almost 7% lower. The median value of bounce rate for B2C businesses is 56.9%. This benchmark was calculated from anonymized data from over 800 companies. Are you a B2C company and want to benchmark your marketing performance against hundreds of other companies like yours? Join the Benchmark Group for free.
*Important note: Databox Benchmark Groups show median values. The median is calculated by taking the “middle” value, the value for which half of the observations are larger and half are smaller. The average is calculated by adding up all of the individual values and dividing this total by the number of observations. While both are measures of central tendency, when there is a possibility of extreme values, the median is generally the better measure to use.
Viewing benchmark data can be enlightening, but seeing where your company’s efforts rank against those benchmarks can be game-changing.
Browse Databox’s open Benchmark Groups and join ones relevant to your business to get free and instant performance benchmarks.
Overall, as you can see and conclude, there’s no “one-size-fits-all” when it comes to landing page bounce rates. What might be too high for one company could be just perfect for another one.
We did separate research, and for most companies that we spoke to, the average landing page bounce rate falls between 25% and 55%. Keep in mind that these are self-reported numbers.
This might seem high for some industries, but most companies are at least somewhat satisfied with their landing page bounce rates.
When we asked our contributors about what they consider a good landing page bounce rate, the answers varied significantly.
For Alex Wang of Ember Fund, a good landing page bounce rate is “anything between 70-90%. This range indicates a page is successful at encouraging further action from visitors and converting them to customers or subscribers. This is one of many key aspects of engagement and brand awareness.”
Nick Leffler of Loclweb says that it’s impossible to determine a good landing page bounce rate across the board.
Leffler provides a great analogy saying that even a 100% bounce rate can be acceptable in some circumstances: “If the goal of a landing page is for a phone call, then the bounce rate will likely show as 100%, which is perfectly fine. The goal of the landing page dictates the ideal bounce rate more than anything. If your goal is more difficult to get people to convert, then the bounce rate will be higher (95-98%), and that’s just fine. If you’re giving away $100, then the bounce rate should be less than 10%.”
Joey Sasson of Moving APT reminds us that we should take several factors into consideration, including the type of website, the products or services offered, and the target audience.
But, he says that as a general rule of thumb, a good landing page bounce rate is “anything below 40%. This means that people are sticking around long enough to see at least what you have to offer, and even if they don’t make a purchase immediately, they’re likely to return later. This gives you a better chance of converting them into customers.”
Adelle Archer of Eterneva mentioned that the first thing we should examine is the “reasons leading to a bounce”.
She explains that “the average bounce rate is a staggering 90% for non-essential items, so instead of focusing on the unrealistic goal of eliminating all of them, you can cut that number to a solid 45% by segmentation and addressing the reasons for them leaving your page. Removing hard bounces, in which the visitor has no interest in your product can eliminate many from the equation – and doing this will allow you to focus on medium and soft bouncers. Then by concentrating on-page content, implementing CTAs, and engaging them to gain additional feedback, you can effectively slice your bounce rate by 50%, and increase your conversions in the process.”
Considering the data obtained from our Benchmark Groups, the marketers we surveyed are not far from the realistic picture in the B2B and B2C industry. While the desired or “good” landing bounce rate is lower than the numbers we see in our groups, the data is not drastically different. This may also explain their current level of satisfaction with this metric.
Related: Exit Rate vs Bounce Rate – How to Analyze Both to Improve Your Content Strategy?
Once you’re certain that your landing page bounce rate isn’t good, the logical move will be to figure out what you’re doing wrong.
We know that this is easier said than done, so we asked our respondents to share what the most common issues that affect landing page bounce rates are, in their experience.
Here’s what negatively affects their bounce rates:
To help you prevent making these mistakes, let’s take a deeper dive into the issues.
Yes, you can DIY in Google Analytics 4, but what if you would prefer a simpler, easier route? After all, once you learn how it’s done, you still have to choose the right metrics and design your custom dashboard to answer the important questions your stakeholders have, for example:
and more…
Now you can benefit from the experience of Google Analytics experts, who have put together a great Databox template showing all the most important website traffic KPIs. This template allows for easy integration with scheduled report delivery. It’s simple to implement and start using as a standalone dashboard or in marketing reports, and best of all, it’s free!
You can easily set it up in just a few clicks – no coding required.
To set up the dashboard, follow these 3 simple steps:
Step 1: Get the template
Step 2: Connect your Google Analytics 4 account with Databox.
Step 3: Watch your dashboard populate in seconds.
Our research isn’t the only one that suggests that page load time is the main culprit when it comes to high bounce rates.
Research from Google has shown that even a 3-second loading time can cause a 32% higher bounce rate compared to a 1-second loading time.
And, if your page takes 6 seconds to load, you can pretty much wave goodbye to your traffic, seeing that the bounce rate probability increases by 106%.
Some of the quick tips we can recommend to speed up the load time are to minimize page elements, get rid of unnecessary images and cut down on JavaScript usage.
The content amount is something you should pay a lot of attention to and it’s best to cater to it based on the complexity of your landing page offer.
While some landing pages require longer copies, it’s best to make it as skimmable as possible.
Break down the page into smaller chunks of text and avoid being repetitive or mentioning any irrelevant information that will bore the readers.
A good landing page example would have a digestible copy, well-formated text, and captivating images.
Design, copy, personalization, load time… you’ve covered it all and the page is ready to bring some conversions your way.
Before you kick back and start relaxing, don’t forget to also take a look at the final form that users have to fill out.
If you’re asking too many questions or are straight up boring the visitors, it will be reflected in the bounce rate.
Try to stick only to essential questions – anything more than that, and you risk losing a conversion.
Related: 27 Marketers Share Proven Ways for Improving the Conversion Rates of Your Website Forms
Considering that over 50% of global website traffic originates from mobile devices, the mobile experience on your landing page plays a huge factor in minimizing bounce rates.
A poor mobile experience can be determined by a variety of things, including slow load time, ugly design, information overload, and more.
For best results, it’s recommended that you create a separate mobile and desktop landing page. This way, you’ll be able to tailor the journey for both devices.
Related: A Beginner’s Guide to Mobile Website Optimization
How to identify your target audience and make sure it’s the right one?
No matter how great your offer is and how well you designed the landing page, you won’t be able to sell anything if you mischaracterize your audience.
Use data and customer type segmentation to create your ideal customer persona and then make sure you’re targeting them properly.
Now that you know how to determine a good bounce rate and which mistakes you should avoid, let’s move on to the practical methods you can use to improve your landing page bounce rate.
The main purpose of a landing page is to get the visitor to click on your CTA (call-to-action), no matter if it’s to buy a product, subscribe to a newsletter, or download a free demo.
Now, if visitors aren’t clicking on your CTA for some reason, most marketers will jump to the conclusion that the problem lies within the landing page.
While this can certainly be the case, it’s also worth looking into the CTA button itself.
Is the CTA convincing? How is it positioned? Does it include action words?
These are just some of the things you’ll have to pay attention to.
Yanis Mellata of Kosy Office agrees that failing to convert visitors can be a result of an “ineffective call-to-action” and shares a few words on how we can fix it: “If the call to action isn’t engaging visitors, consider rewording or restructuring it. Optimize how your users perceive it and if it provides the information they require.”
The best thing you can do with your CTA is to make it personal, short, and filled with action words.
Mellata also reminded us to check whether the CTA works in a different context, as it can help us better pinpoint the issue: “If the call to action you’re employing works in a different context, there might be a fundamental issue with the website’s design. Check if the site is responsive across devices and give an honest rating of the landing page’s design strength.”
Related: How to Write a Call to Action: Increase Your Conversions with 16 Proven Tips for Crafting CTAs
We already talked about this in the previous heading and explained just how damaging a slow landing page load time can be.
To make sure you don’t lose potential prospects before they even get to see what’s on your landing page, have your developers improve the backend speed for the page and make sure its optimized for all devices.
Alex Wang of Ember Fund is one of our respondents that have minimized their bounce rate through this technique.
Wang explains that he accomplished it by “having my developers strengthen my website’s backend and measure how quickly the pages load on different devices. Throughout this process, I’ve come to realize that a seemingly small fix can have a significant impact on your landing page’s bounce rates. Users will not hesitate to leave a site with bad load times.”
While the popular phrase “more is better” from Mean Girls might be applicable to a wide range of situations, your landing page isn’t one of them.
Instead, the motto you should follow is “simple is better”.
The reasoning behind this is also simple – the viewers don’t want to go through million details, and they’ll instantly press that ‘back’ button if they get the impression that you’re trying too hard.
So what exactly can you do to ensure simplicity?
Krittin Kalra of Writecream recommends “keeping it to one page with a couple of images.”
Krittin said that she ran a campaign to get more email subscribers and split-tested several landing page versions.
“There were two versions that I would like to mention here. Both versions had the same copy. The only difference between the two was the CTA. In the first case, the user had to go to a new page to fill in their details and complete the sign-up form. The other version contained the form on the same page. The latter landing page performed better and got 24% more signups for every thousand impressions.”
This result suggests that most users don’t appreciate being dragged to new pages to complete forms. Instead, it’s best to keep it simple and provide everything on one page.
Related: Conversion Rate Optimization: How to Discover Your Next A/B Test
Once you get your CTA and copy in order, the third piece of the puzzle will be to complement the page with some captivating visuals.
This can be anything from an engaging video to interesting illustrations that will capture the users’ attention and persuade them to convert.
Just remember that these elements should complement the CTA, not hide it. Also, make sure that the visuals aren’t slowing down the site or disturbing the overall design.
Obviously, visitors that leave your website are to blame for high bounce rates. How could they!?
Jokes aside, and we’ve already mentioned this earlier, you have to make sure you’re targeting the right audience.
You need to understand who your ideal customer is and where they’re coming from.
For this reason, lots of marketers segment traffic into these four categories:
Overall, while a high bounce rate might look troublesome at first glance, it’s no reason to panic – the metric literally tells you nothing on its own.
Each industry has a different understanding of what is a good landing page bounce rate, so if you want to know where you stand, comparing your bounce rate to similar companies is a good first step to take.
And there’s where Benchmark Groups come in.
Databox’s Benchmark Groups allow you to compare your company’s performance to groups of similar companies, operating in the same industry, with a similar revenue size, company size, etc.
Once you have insight into how your company’s performance stacks up to others, you can come up with better strategies, business goals, and improve your overall performance.
Or, you can just relax knowing that your metrics aren’t off.
Benchmark Groups are free, so if you want to join, all you have to do is sign up for an account.
Are you maximizing your business potential? Stop guessing and start comparing with companies like yours.
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Filip Stojanovic is a content writer who studies Business and Political Sciences. Also, I am a huge tennis enthusiast. Although my dream is to win a Grand Slam, working as a content writer is also interesting.
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