I was looking at the Google Analytics stats for one of my other blogs, and wondering what exactly the “Bounce Rate” meant. I figured it had something to do with people coming and leaving my site, but I was a little concerned since the Bounce Rate over the weekend was upwards of 80%. Were people loading up my site and then skipping out without reading anything?
I quickly found some information, and was relieved by what I read. The Bounce Rate records the number of people who view a page on your site, and then don’t go to any other pages. Since the blog in question currently displays all of its posts on the homepage, that simply means that people were coming to the blog but not clicking over to any other pages. This is part of the reason why stats such as “Time Spent on Site” can be deceptive. People could in fact be going to your blog and reading all the articles on the homepage, but if they never click to another page, it will record their “Time Spent on Site” as 0:00.
This of course shows that web analytics need to be viewed with a grain of salt. You have to dig through the data to find what you’re really looking for. If your site has a splash page, then you are likely to have a very low Bounce Rate, because everyone is going to hit the splash page and then click the ‘enter’ link - thus going to another page and not recording as a ‘bounce’ - but are they really getting what they want from your site?