What's your dealership website bounce rate?

[Ryan Everson]

I look at the dropoff rate as it shows what most people tend to view as a "bounce."

 

[ed.brooks]

Hmmm... interesting results, but I'd like to see a second source on that.

I just thought it was interesting. Each site keeps their own internal data, but seeing a comparison - even though not exact - from a reputable third-party is, as I said, interesting.
Alexa - an Amazon company
Example of an Alexa snapshot = TrueCar.com

 

[Alex Snyder]

Bounce rates increase when one engages in SEO, SEM, and other forms of click marketing. The more a business does it the higher the bounce rate gets. And this is not a bad thing! So, Ed's example is quite believable.

Think of it like a car dealership... you want as many people walking around your lot as possible even if 100% of them are not going to close. The more lures you cast into the ocean, the more fish will bite.

P.S. CarGurus ROCKS in digital marketing!

 

[Alexander Lau]

Bounce rates increase when one engages in SEO, SEM, and other forms of click marketing. The more a business does it the higher the bounce rate gets. And this is not a bad thing! So, Ed's example is quite believable.

Think of it like a car dealership... you want as many people walking around your lot as possible even if 100% of them are not going to close. The more lures you cast into the ocean, the more fish will bite.

P.S. CarGurus ROCKS in digital marketing!

Yup, precisely. I've said the same, "the more hooks in the water (that could be another website -- eating up an organic spot, besides OEM compliant ones) the better."

CG does a damn good job at it, yup!

 

[craigh]

Bounce rates increase when one engages in SEO, SEM, and other forms of click marketing. The more a business does it the higher the bounce rate gets. And this is not a bad thing! So, Ed's example is quite believable.

It amazes me how many people miss this point.
We helped a dealer do a big campaign to reach customers in an area outside their usual geographic area.
We launched AdWords, Facebook ads, SEO efforts, etc. We got them many more, significantly less qualified, visitors and their bounce rate jumped.
Net result was still positive. Exactly what we expected, definitely not what they expected.

 

[Jeff Kershner]

@Ed Brooks what do you think contributes to those numbers? There are a ton of variables involved, as @Alex Snyder points out. I honestly didn't expect to see Truecar on the bottom. Also - what's the most important metric here?

 

[joe.pistell]

I look at the dropoff rate as it shows what most people tend to view as a "bounce."

I like where your headed @reverson. I'm an fan of studying the nuanced engagement dance on our sites. Please speak more on your thoughts above.

 

[Ryan Everson]

I like where your headed @reverson. I'm an fan of studying the nuanced engagement dance on our sites. Please speak more on your thoughts above.

Well bounce rate as displayed in Google Analytics can be too easily manipulated by custom events (ie: scrolling 5% down the page) potentially installed by a myriad of different vendors. That's why it often varies so much between different website vendors; it's not because one vendor is that much better, it's because they have custom events (often legitimate, sometimes not) that are triggered which then don't count the session as a "bounce" in analytics.

So all the 20 groups and sales pitches that compare bounce rates between sites are utterly pointless. The only time you should compare bounce rates is within YOUR OWN website and compare the bounce rate of different traffic sources, audiences, landing pages, etc.

Dropoff rate however can not be manipulated so it is a good way to track the true "raw" bounce rate. You can view the dropoff rate by going to Behavior -> Behavior Flow in analytics. You have the option to use custom segments and then visualize the dropoffs based on acquisition, behavior, etc. I've attached a screenshot showing just how easy this is to view:

 

[Ryan Everson]

I like where your headed @reverson. I'm an fan of studying the nuanced engagement dance on our sites. Please speak more on your thoughts above.

In terms of how I study the engagement dance on our websites, one of the first things I like to look at is the VDP stats by traffic source / medium. We are able to quickly do this with a custom Google Data Studio report we built.

 

[Chris Leslie]

@reverson would still love to get a full copy of one of your reports.