Benchmarks
Informational Sites
Is your bounce rate too high? Are visitors staying long enough? Find guidelines and benchmarks for blogs, magazines, and documentation sites.
Benchmarks for Informational Sites (Blogs, Magazines, News)
An informational website is successful when it provides visitors with the information they are looking for quickly and clearly. The goal isn’t necessarily a sale, but rather reader satisfaction and engagement. The following benchmarks will help you evaluate the performance of your informational site.The context of bounce rate is crucial here!
A high bounce rate is not always a bad sign for informational sites. If a user finds an answer on your page via Google, reads it, and leaves, your page was successful—even if it technically counts as a “bounce.”
Bounce Rate
| Value | Interpretation |
|---|---|
| > 80% | Needs Improvement: Likely a problem. Visitors aren’t finding what they expect, or the loading time is too high. |
| 60% - 80% | Normal: A common range for blogs and news sites. Analyze the pages with the highest rates. |
| < 60% | Excellent: Your content is very engaging and encourages visitors to browse further. Great job! |
Avg. Session Duration
This is one of the most important metrics for informational sites. It shows whether your content is actually being read.| Value | Interpretation |
|---|---|
| < 1 Minute | Needs Improvement: Visitors are only skimming your page and see no reason to stay. |
| 1 - 3 Minutes | Good: A solid value indicating that the content is being read. |
| > 3 Minutes | Excellent: Your articles are captivating and hold the readers’ attention. |
Pages per Session
Shows whether visitors discover more content on your site after the first article.| Value | Interpretation |
|---|---|
| 1.0 - 1.4 | Normal: Many visitors come for one article and then leave. |
| 1.5 - 2.0 | Good: You are successfully encouraging a significant portion of your visitors to explore more pages. |
| > 2.0 | Excellent: Your internal linking and content recommendations are working exceptionally well. |
What to do if your metrics are off?
- High Bounce Rate / Low Session Duration?
- Improve readability: Use shorter paragraphs, subheadings, and images.
- Strong introduction: The first few sentences must captivate the reader and assure them they are in the right place.
- Internal linking: Offer links to related topics at the end of the article.