Firstly this is highly dependent on the type of site you're running.
It's not possible to call as an industry standard I feel as even among
similar kind of sites there are just too many variables. It's even harder I
would suggest than conversion rates which should also be taken with a huge
pinch of salt. I can however give you some numbers based on our experience.

Retail sites driving well targeted traffic 20-40% bounce. (One vendor told
us anything 33% should be a flag)

Simple landing pages (with one call to action such as add to cart) I've seen
bounce at a much higher rate, anywhere from 70-90%.

Content websites with high search visibility (often for irrelevant terms)
can bounce at 40-60%.

Portals (MSN, Yahoo groups etc) have much lower bounce rates in our
experience 10-30%.

Service sites (self service or FAQ sites) again usually lower 10-30%.

Lead generation (services for sale) 30-50%.

I must stress that all the above figures are based purely on our own
experience after working with clients. I wouldn't advise you base an
optimization model around these numbers. We advise that when forming a
benchmark, that you do it internally. Take the average bounce rate over a
given period on your current site. You need to have at least 1000 entries
coming from normal sources to get reasonably actionable data.

Measure what the average bounce rate is and then work to get that down.

-----
Steve Jackson
CEO Aboavista
w: http://www.aboavista.com/
e: steve@...
Editor - Conversion Chronicles
w: http://www.conversionchronicles.com/
e: steve@...
p: +358 2 4101 771
m: +358 50 343 5159
Co-Chair Nordic Branch
Web Analytics Association (International)
http://www.webanalyticsassociation.org/
-----




_____

From: webanalytics@yahoogroups.com [mailto:webanalytics@yahoogroups.com] On
Behalf Of jonathan casuncad
Sent: 12 April 2006 06:31
To: webanalytics@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [webanalytics] Bounce Rates


What's an acceptable bounce rate? I know the question
sounds too vague but I just want a number to measure
our own bounce rates against acceptable industry
metrics.

I know that worldwide ecommerce conversion rate is
about 2.5% so that's what we measure our own
conversion rate against for reference purposes. I need
an accurate metric that is a good representation of
the current trends in ecommerce sites for bounce rates
(especially the home page). This would help us make
more informed business decisions. Thanks!

Jonathan Casuncad
Search Engine Marketing Consultant
http://www.sem-pros.com/

Search Engine Marketing Directory: http://www.sem-pros.com/resources/
Search Engine Marketing Blog: http://www.sem-pros.com/blog/
Search Engine Marketing Forum: http://www.sem-pros.com/sem-forums/

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Web Metrics Discussion Group
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