Career Site Bounce Rate - What You Need to Know

A common question I often get asked is “why is my website bounce rate so high and what can I do to improve it?”

Well, let’s first start by defining what bounce rate means and why it’s important. The bounce rate is a statistic you can pull from within your website analytics program. Bounce rate describes a percentage of website visitors that leave your website directly from the page they entered without clicking through to any other page on your website. For example if your career site bounce rate was 50% it would mean that half of the people coming to your career site are leaving without clicking though to any other pages.

The reason why bounce rate is important is because it’s a metric commonly used to measure visitor engagement. High bounce rate can often equal low visitor engagement. Below are some elements that might be contributing to your career sites high bounce rate

Does your career site appear in Search Engine Results pages for irrelevant keywords? Appearing for irrelevant keywords is a common flaw of a PPC campaign not being properly managed or set up, but it can also affect organic listings. If your website is ranking for poorly-chosen keywords, visitors clicking through expecting to find something specific will be disappointed when they look at the page that doesn't reveal what they were looking for.

Does your career site offer a clean design and user friendly interface? Presentation is important. If your career site design is cluttered, incorporates dark color backgrounds or lots of blinky text or flash animations it can make visitors feel uncomfortable, and distract them from clicking further into your website. Chances are if your career site includes some of the mentioned elements above, you’re likely to have a high bounce rate.

Is your career site navigation clean and easily understandable? Navigational issues are one of the key factors that contribute to the bounce rate. If you want your visitors to move around your website provide them with a clear intuitive navigational structure.

Does your career site content add value to the visitor? Make sure your website content adds value to your visitors. In addition, ensure that the content and information flow is good enough to carry your visitors from one page to the other. If you have great content but visitors can’t find it or your career site puts up barriers to entry such as “set up an account” or "subscribe to our email list” before they can access the content, this may be adding to your high bounce rate.