Google Analytics Benchmarking Newsletter: How does your site perform?

[prima-253509]

With Google recently releasing benchmarking data I am curious as to what you all see across the various types of website niches that you work with (eCommerce, news, blog, services, small business, etc). And how SEO'd websites compare with this "raw" data provided by google.

We have one medium size (12,000 products) strictly eCommerce website  that has a bounce rate of 37% and an avg time on site of 5:20

While two other medium size eCommerce/blog sites have a bounce rate of 57% and 59% with average time on site of 2:37 and 2:30 respectively.

Finally, I manage a website for a local small business that provides business and home cleaning services. This site has a bounce rate of 45% and 1:40 average time on site.

How do your sites perform in these areas? Is it typical to see this great of a disparity between strict eCommerce websites and those sites that are both informational and transactional in nature? What about other kinds of websites?

Cheers!

[prima-253509]

Hey Aaron,

good point, hard to always keep that in perspective. The reason that I am concerned about it is because from what I understand google is taking those metrics and using it in there search results. We have a landing page that is full of good content, people spend an average of over 4 minutes on it (a single page) and it had a good conversion value, however it had a high bounce rate. We have seen the number of impressions where this pages shows up decline quite substantially over the past month and I am wondering if it is do to the high bounce rate.

So if the search engines are incorporating those stats, as much as it might not mean anything in terms of user experience (i.e. we are actually providing a good user experience), it might mean a lot for how the search engines rank you (i.e. they just see a high bounce rate).

Thanks for the response!

[AaronSchinke]

Bounce rates are tricky. Sometimes the better the landing page, the higher the bounce rate. What you guys have been touching on is that is is near impossible to come up with a real relevant benchmark for the web as a whole. ... But if you/your clients are better than average it makes a nice sales piece...

[prima-253509]

That would be really nice to see, and would definitely be helpful. Would love to see that take place.

Fireclick's stats are very interesting, will look at it a little more, thanks for the tip.

[Benj25]

We could do with someone like SEOMoz to do a survey, separated by industry whereby people submit their average bounce rate.

Another good resource is Fireclick Index

http://index.fireclick.com/

Though no bounce rates!

[prima-253509]

Hey Benjamin,

Thanks for the response, good info, and sharing your stats. I think your last statement about comparing bounce rate directly between industries is exactly what I was thinking. The aggregated stats from google are great but there is no segmentation so it doesn't seem to be incredibly helpful as a benchmark. Thus the question and hopefully we will get enough answers to get a feel for how different industries compare and how the sites that the seomoz community handle fair as compared to the aggregate stats.

I know that we have quite a bit of work to do to get our sites optimized.

Thanks again for your response

[Benj25]

We have a medium sized site, selling books - we have around 15,000 products.

Our bounce rate is 38% and our average time on site is 3:16.

I've heard of bounce rates as low as 9% or as high as 80%, it depends on three main factors as far as I can tell:

1. Industry: what industry is your website in? Like you say in the OP, you see a disparity between eCommerce websites and information sites. If you come across a book site and you are looking to buy books - chances are willing to stay at least long enough to browse a category or do a search. Conversely if you are looking for a specific piece of information, and the specific information isn't available immediately on site - chances are you are going to bounce. I've also heard that Non-profit sites have lower bounce rates compared to say, a flat out retail website. Whilst there isn't an industry average, you certainly can plot bounce rate ranges for industry.

2. Traffic Source / Quality: it's fair to say if you have a bounce rate of over 70% you are probably not getting quality traffic. Or your site isn't relevant to the traffic you are attracting. We've seen a few big spikes in traffic due to email campaigns or blog posts and on those days the bounce rates have always been higher.

3. Web Design: it's clear that website design is going to have an effect on bounce rate - if you've got a well designed and relevant landing page for the keyword you are targeting then clearly your bounce rate will be lower. If you're targeting 'robots' as a keyword and your design is full of pictures of monkeys - expect a higher bounce rate. Slow loading times and often a complete lack of SEO often lead to high bounce rates.

I think it's unfair to compare bounce rate directly between industries - it is subjective, but it gives a great indication of how your landing pages are doing so I often look at bounce rate for landing pages from search only.

Here are some good bounce rate resources:

• Bounce rate and design http://www.1stwebdesigner.com/design/web-design-bounce-rate/
• Bounce rate demystified http://webanalysis.blogspot.com/2007/07/bounce-rate-demystified.html
• Google Analytics Forum Post on bounce rate: http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Google%20Analytics/thread?tid=3301d79d3932b447&hl=en