If you have a website, you should be using Google Analytics. With Google Analytics, you can learn where your traffic came from, how long your users stayed on your site, how many pages they visited, and even what percentage of visitors decided to contact your firm. Using insights like Google Analytics, you can determine exactly where and how to optimize your site to get more clients.
Once your web development team has installed Google Analytics, you may be overwhelmed by all of the data you now have access to. Fortunately, you don’t need to be an analytics expert to pull some great data from Google Analytics. One of the best metrics to look into is your bounce rate.
What is a bounce rate?
Your site’s bounce rate is arguably some of the most important data available. A “bounce rate” is the percentage of people who land on your firm’s site, then immediately leave. Having a high bounce rate is not ideal because it means that your site likely isn’t enticing potential clients to learn more about your services or contact your firm. It could also mean that whatever brought them to your site (an ad, link on the web, etc.) didn’t align with the content they were expecting.
On Google Analytics, you can see a bounce rate for your site as a whole, as well as an individual page. A “good” bounce rate is somewhere around 30%-50%. Any lower and it’s likely your data isn’t accurate. If your bounce rate is hovering between 70%-80%, there’s room for improvement. Anything above 80% is probably either a technical error with your site or an analytics error.
How can I improve a bad bounce rate?
If you want to improve your bounce rate, you can start by writing content that will convert well. Sometimes, your verbiage will make all the difference in the world. For example, if there is no strong call to action enticing visitors to speak with an attorney at your firm, there will be no reason for consumers to visit your site’s other pages to learn more information or fill out a web evaluation.
Other ways to improve your bounce rate can include changing the colors of your site, especially on sections where you want visitors to “convert” (contact your firm). Some colors, such as green, can actually be off-putting to your readers.
But sometimes, a high bounce rate is good…
Before you completely rewrite the copy on your site, consider this: Sometimes, a high bounce rate is not a bad thing. It may be true that a high bounce rate means nobody interacted with that page, but you will need to study the text on that page to determine whether or not you wanted someone to take an action.
For example, let’s say one of your landing pages has your firm’s phone number front and center, in bright and large font. It may not be a bad thing for this page to have a high bounce rate. It’s possible that once visitors land on this site, they decide to call your firm and speak with a member of your intake staff.
For law firms in particular, it is vitally important to ask everyone who calls your firm where they heard about you. Systematically asking callers this effectively sets up an offline check for the online data that you’re able to measure using Google Analytics. Combining offline knowledge of new client origin with bounce rate data from Google Analytics, you can determine whether or not you need to revise your website’s layout or copy, or whether to simply continue the good work!