Bounce rates and TOS: Most trustworthy global benchmarks

[RaoulWB]

Hi all,

I'm trying to write a blog post about the human attention span and the likelihood of people bouncing on websites.

After doing some research I'm surprised about how many 'outdated' numbers are circulating: many articles refer to studies from '12 or '14. Like this:
https://time.com/12933/what-you-think-you-know-about-the-web-is-wrong/

Do you guys have specific sources you find most trustworthy/timely when it comes to topics like global Time On Site averages and Bounce Rates?

Would be much appreciated, thank you,
Raoul

[effectdigital]

Hey Raoul

Just gonna do a quick Google and see what I can find from 2019, articles from sites which I have previously felt had a good say on one or two topics

https://www.bigcommerce.co.uk/blog/bounce-rates/#what-is-a-bounce-rate-on-an-ecommerce-website

The above was posted in 2019. Even though the post date isn't declared on the front-end, it is declared in the schema which you can review the results for here. Check the 'datePublished' entry under 'Article'. This is a more general post on bounce rates, but includes some sample stats from a few studies (how email segmentation affected bounce rates, how having a second review on a page instead of just one affected bounce rates). It might not have everything you need but if you give it a proper read, it might be a component that could help to build your story. I have read a few posts by Bigcommerce, I actually think they're usually pretty neat

https://conversionxl.com/guides/bounce-rate/benchmarks/

This one comes from a source I haven't read previously, so you'll have to evaluate how legitimate you think this content is. It's recent but not super recent, having been published in 2017. Again I had to detect this through schema (here). Look for 'datePublished' under 'WebPage'. It may be a bit more useful to you, as it's a series of bounce-rate benchmarks split by various dimensions (channel, site type etc)

http://www.fonemedia.co.uk/blog---mobile-bounce-rates.html

Posted on 18th Feb 2019. Short and sweet, but again I've never heard of these guys so I don't know how good / accurate the info is. Their main claim is that "The bounce rate on mobile is 28% higher than desktop". I would be wary, nothing is cited, there's no images of graphs, charts or data-sets. No citations are given

https://www.crazyegg.com/blog/why-users-leave-a-website/

Posted Feb 2019. These guys I do trust. They produce a pretty cool heat-mapping analytics solution for websites, so that you can see a heatmap of (aggregate) user mouse movements and clicks. Lots of people use CrazyEgg and they probably wouldn't go making outrageous claims without doing some ground-work. They give a break-down of different bounce-rates by site type, maybe you could aggregate their findings with the ones from Bigcommerce and ConversionXL - adding your own thoughts. What I like here is the focus on time rather than the actual percentage bounce-rate ("The 15 Second Rule")

https://www.gorocketfuel.com/the-rocket-blog/whats-the-average-bounce-rate-in-google-analytics/

I think you found this one too. It's neat, but it doesn't specify a publish date on-page or in the schema. Judging by the site's blog feed, the post was written 2014 or earlier. The content mentions a sample of data from 2013, so we can say that by now this is probably out of date (what a shame!)

https://golocalinteractive.com/blog/industry-news/marketing-in-the-age-of-short-attention-spans/

From June 2019. A really thorough, well presented study which is easy to read. This plays more to your short attention spans angle. I don't know these guys, but that's okay because they cite (most of) their claims including a very interesting research paper from Akamai who I am sure many are aware of (which itself was written in 2017, not too long ago)

... that's all I have time for right now! Hope that helps