Actually, scratch that.
This isn't just going to be about Bounce rate, but all of your dealer website's metrics in general.
Starting with Bounce Rate.
First, you MUST understand what bounce rate is exactly.
Bounce rate is measured by the number of people that visit your website (or a specific page on your site) and leave without a second interaction.
An interaction is measured by how deep a visitor travels through your site. A click-through from a call-to-action button on one page to another is considered an interaction. So, if your site visitors are clicking from link to link on your site and viewing a lot of pages, your bounce rate will be LOW.
BUT, there are so many people out there trying to teach you how to lower websites bounce rate, arguing that doing so will somehow help you see an increase in leads, but I'm here to prove them wrong.
While I will agree that getting deep within a site provides more opportunity for the site visitor to complete an action, it doesn't necessarily mean that they will complete an action. Catch my drift?
If you really want to get your website producing quality traffic and leads, you need to consider two things.
1.) What's the overall objective of the site as a whole, and
2.) What's the objective of each individual page on the website
Without those two things clearly defined, it doesn't matter what your bounce rate, click-through-rate, behavior flow, time on site, visitors vs. unique visitors and the butt load of other metrics are. Your website will never perform the way you want it to.
Why? Because you won't even know for yourself what the definition of performance is.
So, do me a favor right now. Take some time to identify what the objectives of your website are.
Now back to bounce rate.
There are hundreds of high-traffic blogs out there that have near 100% bounce rates.
Any idea why?
Because, even though they didn't create a second interaction, the page or blog post that the visitor landed on had the primary objective on the same page.
In other words, they completed the desired action on the first page that they landed on.
It might've been a lead submission form to download a free whitepaper or ebook, it might even just be a sign up form to stay connected via a newsletter.
What you MUST understand is that your website's bounce rate is directly proportionate to your objectives and the path you desire the visitor to take to get to those objectives.
Understand that if your objective (the desired action) happens on the same page that the visitor lands on, your bounce rate will be higher.
If you want the customer to click through a funnel of links before they get to the final desired action on your site, your bounce rate will be lower.
There's a reason that some website providers refuse to place your dealership's phone number on the homepage of your website. Because they are trying to force the user to create a second interaction to find it, causing them to click deeper into your website...
If your bounce rate is low, your provider get's to boast how effective they made your website perform, and so far, a ton of you are buying into it.
STOP!
Here's the problem. Your website isn't performing the way it should or you wouldn't even be reading this.
Are you picking up what I'm putting down?
Before you worry about bounce rate and the plethora of other metrics to track on your website, focus on what the objective of your website is in the first place.
Identify what path you want the customer to follow that will lead them to your desired end result.
That path may be going deep on your site from page to page, or it may be on the same page they land on.
Once you know what you want the customer to accomplish, understand what normal bounce rates look like in those scenarios.
Have questions about tracking bounce rates properly? Hit me up in the comments below.
