Strategic insights
Forget Bounce Rates, focus on Conversions

A loyal fan is a far more important metric than a follower. Just because someone is following you doesn't mean that are actually buying your products or reading your content.

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Written by Thomas Baekdal on February 19, 2011

I could write many articles about what's wrong with web analytics. Most metrics don't tell you anything, and some even causes you to make the wrong decisions.

One of these is "bounce rate." As Google puts it:

Bounce Rate is the percentage of single-page visits (i.e. visits in which the person left your site from the entrance page.) Bounce Rate is a measure of visit quality and a high Bounce Rate generally indicates that site entrance (landing) pages aren't relevant to your visitors.

Many web consultants look at bounce rates as one of the most important metrics of all. They will tell you that it is a very bad thing when people only see the first page of your site.

Indeed, bounce rates used to be very important in the past, back when the internet didn't actually work. But today the world has changed. The way we use the internet is drastically different. Focusing on bounce rates might distract you from your real goal.

To put this into perspective, let me take you on a little tour of the history of ...bouncing. And, into the future of direct engagement and conversion rates.

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