You now have the Google tracking analytics code installed on your website and you are receiving your monthly reports in your inbox.

What is bounce rate and why is it important? Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors that visit only one page. Single page visits in which the person left your site from the entrance landing page.

Your bounce rate tells you whether visitors are having problems navigating through your site. There may be site design issues or usability issues. As well, your bounce rate tells you if your reader is engaged and if they find your content interesting enough to view other pages.

To see each pages bounce rate go to Behaviour, all pages, or behaviour
flow.

A 100 percent bounce rate

means that your visitor did not find anything interesting to click on. On the other hand, a zero percent bounce rate means visitors found something of interest to hold their attention. The goal is to have a blog bounce rate of

less than 50 percent.

Google uses bounce rate as part of its algorithm. Some suggestions on improving your bounce rate on your website are the following:

• View your website in different web browsers and check for functionality and usability.
• Make sure your website is mobile friendly. For example, after viewing my website on an iPhone 5 I found that the drop down menu did not function – yet it worked perfectly on the iPhone 4s.
• Make sure your links are working correctly and that your homepage is simple and easy to navigate. Go to http://validator.w3.org/checklink
• Check to see which pages have a low bounce rate and are drawing an audience, and make changes to the pages that are not.
• Keep your navigation bar simple and easy to access.
• Make sure that the fonts used with your content on your website are easy to read and understand. For example, certain grey, italics, or white fonts on a black background may be hard to read.
• Try to decrease download time on your landing page. Utilize your footer by placing menu options there.

Yvonne Wu is an award winning author and certified Professional Virtual Author’s Assistant who helps authors spend more of their time doing what they do best – writing a great book. You have a story to tell.  Let’s get you out there to tell it!

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