Not sure what the Bounce in your Analytics report mean? Bounces - think of this as jumping on your trampoline with your friend, and you bounce them right off, landing somewhere else.

If you website is getting too many “bounces” then maybe you are not, no, YOU ARE NOT communicating to your potential customers well. It is that simple. The surfer shows up to your site thinking you are one thing, you have a few seconds to show them your stuff, and they immediately turn around and leave. That could mean your site does not mean what the customer was looking for, or people were looking for something totally different, or it could mean you are very bad communicator in general.

Internet surfers in general are fairly driven to find the right information. During the dark ages of dial-up, we had a rule of thumb that viewers would not wait more than 8 seconds for a page to load. Page loading wait time has very little to do with communicating your product, it is simply a measure of efficiently. So in the modern high speed internet, people want a confirmation of what they are looking for in at least under 8 seconds. If they searched a keyword, they want confirmation NOW!

Common Sense about online Buyers: When was the last time someone walked up to Wal-Mart’s front door, walked in, looked around for 8 seconds and walked out? It doesn’t happen. People wanted “Wal-Mart”, they drove to Wal-Mart, and they shopped at Wal-Mart. Buyers generally know exactly what they are looking for online, they don’t window shop like they are mall.

Common Sense about online Surfers: Surfers are like you mother-in-law, shopping with your wife on a Sunday while you watch a football game. They drive to the mall, they walk all around, they may walk into some shops (or all of the shops), and they may buy one or two things. Generally surfers online will find your website, but they are not really your target buyer, so if your website does not show strong sales to visitors, then maybe you are inviting in the wrong buyers. Sometimes, visitors and views are a waist of your time.

Example: We have a great page on a local site about parks. We silo the page’s content to include every single park in the Inland Empire of Southern California. The problem is the page is on average the 4th highest ranked page on the site, and it has about a 75% bounce rate. In simple terms, we too highly keyworded on the word “park” for our market place. So we get a bunch of views, but no return visits, because the surfers are not in Southern California.