In the real world, you have clues which tell you when you’re off-putting. People make faces. They give it away with body language. They sometimes tell you outright. On the net, you have no such clues. The only information you have is your traffic data, and it’s important to know how to use it.

There are three major metrics that can show you the attitude users have to your home page. The first is your bounce rate. The bounce rate for your home page is the number of people viewing your home page divided by the total number of views on the site. Multiply this by one hundred and you have a percentage. Most websites hope for a 35% bounce rate, as it means that the majority of users actually click through the site. Anything over 50% is something to worry about. Google analysts have noted that a bounce rate of less than 20% is very hard to achieve.

The next most important metric for your site’s home page is the click-through rate. Most sites want to have a high click-through rate as it means that users are sampling the more focussed pages within the site. The term click-through rate, or CTR, is most often used in marketing to measure the number of clicks a campaign has generated. For the purposes of your home page, your click-through rate assesses how attractive your home page’s links are. A click-through rate can be calculated by dividing the number of clicks recorded by the number of page views, then multiplying by one hundred. Analysing your click-through rates can help you to determine which pages of your site are most attractive on your home page, and from which pages your home page is accessed.

This brings us to the third metric. The exit rate is the percentage of times your home page is used as an exit point. It is quite similar to a bounce rate, but records the number of times your home page was the point of exit from the site. This can include the number of times users both entered and immediately exited the site, or bounced.

Not all of these things will be of the same importance to every site. For example, a news site might not worry too much about a high bounce rate for their home page, because there are many people who will regularly dip in just to get the headlines. An e-commerce site will be particularly sensitive to a high home page bounce rate because it means that no customers are being tempted toward the products pages. The importance of click-through to your site will be an individual thing that you should assess, and it is often a good idea to approach a consultant for help.

Assessing your home page metrics is a good way of finding out how well it’s functioning, and can give you ideas for improvements. Good search engine optimisation is not just about bringing in traffic. If you’re worried about the performance of your home page, talk to us at SEO Consult.

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