Your website has 10 seconds to prove it’s the right place — is it passing the test?

How to reduce your website bounce rate and boost patient engagement in under 10 seconds

I still speak with clients who neither measure nor monitor the engagement and/or bounce rate of their website.

Information that is freely available in Google Analytics and, so, should be regularly reported, either by your web developer or internal marketing assistant/manager.

This could be described as the instant thermometer of just how attractive your website is to new visitors.

Let's get an official definition in from ChatGPT:

"Engagement rate and bounce rate are important metrics in Google Analytics that enable you to measure and analyse user engagement with your website or app.

Both metrics are defined in terms of engaged sessions.

• A session is a period during which a user is engaged with your website or app.

• An engaged session is a session that meets any of the following criteria:

  • Lasts longer than 10 seconds

  • Has a key event

  • Has 2 or more screen or page views

  
  

The engagement rate is the percentage of engaged sessions on your website or mobile app.

The bounce rate is the opposite of the engagement rate. The bounce rate is the percentage of sessions that were not engaged.

In other words, engagement rate helps you measure the percentage of visits to your website or app that involved some form of meaningful engagement.

An example

For instance, a user visits your website, reads some content for less than 10 seconds, and then leaves. While they were on your website, they didn't trigger any events or visit any other pages.

In this instance, because the user didn't match any of the criteria of an engaged session (the session was less than 10 seconds, no key event occurred, and there were not at least 2 pageviews or screenviews), the session would not count as an engaged session.

If this were the only session on your website, the engagement rate would be 0% and the bounce rate would be 100%."

So - if 80% of visitors to your website are engaged (stay more than 10 seconds and take a look around) your site has chance to earn it's living.

But - if 80% of visitors to your website leave within 10 seconds - you are getting a big "NO" vote.

Start measuring and monitoring RIGHT NOW and set yourself a target of achieving and retaining an 80% engagement rate.

It's a key factor in your success.

How to make sure your engagement rate is 80%?

Seth Godin tells us that the number 1 question in the right type of visitor's mind is.....

"Do people like me visit this practice?"

Do you answer that in your first 10 seconds?