Internet Marketing Ninjas, Trevor Stolber says normal bounce rates can be broken up as the following:

A bounce rate of:     

50% or less is excellent

60-70% is typical

70-80% is poor

80% plus is very bad.

There are a number of areas that Marketing Eye focuses on to ensure that our bounce rate is low, however, I honestly am completely surprised at just how low it is.

These include:

1.   Content marketing strategy: Marketing Eye has a content marketing strategy that we revisit every quarter. The strategy includes improving page content, changing keywords that are under-performing, writing blogs daily or at the minimum of two per week and adding pages that are relevant to the website.

2.   Understand your visitors to your website: If you don't map out the visitors experience and segment who they are and what they are looking for, then you will never have a low bounce rate. It is simply impossible. Break up your visitors into different segments and map out their experience. Ensure that their experience is relevant, thought provoking and that it has calls to action.

3.  Search Engine Optimization: We have full-time employees who manage our websites. They are as passionate as I am about bounce rates and continually strive to improve the performance of our website. They also drive what content is going to be placed on the website by ensuring our writers are nimble and don't fall into the trap of writing for themselves rather than the audience.

The statistics that matter:

The visitors have gone down in the past month significantly as we have not been developing as much content and our blogs are infrequent. This is the busiest time of year for our company, so we are all madly putting clients first and preparing for the year ahead.

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BOUNCE RATE: 7.76%

VISITORS: 7,553

PAGE VIEWS: 23,112

PAGES: 3.06

TIME ON SITE: 6.11 mins

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How does your bounce rate match up to others in your industry?

1.  Product information pages: Min: 3.25% - Max: 50% - Average: 33.03%

2.  Lead generation sites: Min: 5.24% - Max: 81% - Average: 47.38%

3.  Web Stores and eCommerce sites: Min: 14.3% - Max: 68% - Average: 33.9%

4.  News and media sites: Min: 25% - Max: 81.4% - Average: 55.56%

5.  Other types of sites: Min: 13% - Max: 85% - Average: 41.13%

Source: www.conversionvoodoo.com

As a small business, engaging your visitors online in a meaningful way means more sales. It is as simple as that. Too many small business owners are still not investing enough in their websites and while they may have a budget for adwords and pay-per-click, they think that that alone will bring sales. 

My advice to you if your bounce rate is high: DON'T START 2014 THROWING AWAY VALUABLE MARKETING DOLLARS ON THE WRONG ONLINE STRATEGY. 

Invest heavily in your website and map out your visitors experience - you will see the results in your sales.