Bounce Rates Explained for Birth Pros

Ok, so you finally worked up the nerve to open Google Analytics. Clicking around, you find something called “bounce rate.” And it says 72%.

Seventy-two percent of people are BOUNCING off your doula website? OUCH.

Take a breath. A high bounce rate isn’t always a problem. Sometimes it’s a sign your page did its job. The trick is knowing which pages to worry about and which ones to leave alone.

What is a “bounce”?

A bounce happens when someone lands on your site and leaves without engaging. No second page, no form, no lingering.

In Google Analytics 4 (GA4), a visit counts as “engaged” if the person does at least one of these things:

• Stays for more than 10 seconds
• Visits a second page
• Does something you’ve marked as important, like submitting your contact form

If they do none of those, it’s a bounce.

One of our goals in good SEO is to lower your bounce rate on the pages that matter most. That means more visitors choosing to stay, take the next step, and learn more about your services.

How do I find my bounce rate?

GA4 doesn’t always show bounce rate in its standard reports. You may need to add it yourself. It only takes a minute:

1. Log in to Google Analytics.
2. Go to Reports, then Engagement, then Pages and screens.
3. Click the pencil icon (Customize report) in the top right.
4. Click Metrics, then Add metric, and choose Bounce rate.
5. Click Apply, then Save.

Now you’ll see bounce rate for each page on your site. Page by page is the view you want.

What’s a normal bounce rate?

You may have heard that 30 to 50% is normal for service websites. That number came from the old version of Google Analytics, which measured bounces differently. It doesn’t translate cleanly to GA4.

A more useful approach: compare your pages to each other, and compare each page to itself over time. Is your Services page getting better or worse? Is your homepage keeping people longer than it did six months ago?

And remember, some bounces are good news. Someone might visit your site, grab your phone number, and call you. That counts as a bounce! But it’s also a new client 🙂

Which of your pages should have a high bounce rate?

Some pages are supposed to have a high bounce rate. That’s their job. Others should keep people clicking. Here’s a quick guide for a typical doula or midwife website.

Usually high (no worries here):

• Blog posts that answer one question. Someone searches “what to pack in your hospital bag,” reads your list, and leaves happy. She got what she came for. And she might remember your name.
• Resource pages and handouts. People grab the info and go.

Should be lower, so worth a closer look:

• Your homepage. Its job is to send people deeper into your site. To your services, your story, your contact page.
• Your Services page. Someone here is thinking about hiring you. Ideally she clicks to your pricing, your About page, or your contact form next.
• Your About page. After reading your story, the next natural step is learning about your services or reaching out.
• Your Contact page. If people land here and leave without sending your form, something may be getting in the way.

Before you judge any page, ask yourself one question: What was this person hoping to find when she clicked, and did she find it?

A family who Googled “how long does postpartum bleeding last” wants an answer to that one question. Most of them will read and go. A few, maybe the ones feeling overwhelmed and wishing they had help at home, will click over to learn about your postpartum support. Those are the readers you’re writing for.

Don’t sweat small numbers

Small numbers swing wildly. Say a page got 20 visits last month and 15 of them bounced. That’s a 75% bounce rate. But it’s also just 15 people. Next month it could be 30%. Or 90%.

My rule of thumb: if a page gets fewer than about a hundred visits a month, don’t read much into its bounce rate yet.

And if your whole site is still pretty quiet? That’s okay! Most birth pros are in that spot. Your time is better spent getting found first. Think blog posts, local SEO, and your Google Business Profile. Bounce rate can wait.

Your bounce rate fix-it checklist

Found a page that should be keeping people around, but isn’t? Work through these three questions in order.

1. Is the page working?

Check the speed. Speed isn’t glamorous, but it matters. A slow page loses people while it’s still loading. You can check your page load time by following the steps in my post “Faster Websites Have Better SEO.” One of the easiest fixes is shrinking the size of the image files on your site. If you’re on WordPress, the Imagify plugin can shrink your images for you.

Tap through everything. Click each button, link, and menu item to make sure it goes where it should. Does all your text and every photo show up fully on the screen?

Open it on your phone. Families often search late at night on their phones, so this one matters a lot for birth pros. Pages can shift around on a small screen. Your booking button might slide way down below a giant photo, where no one will ever scroll. You may also notice your bounce rate is higher on mobile. That’s often a sign your site doesn’t translate well to smaller screens.

Take a fresh look at your design. This one is harder, because design is so tied to our personal taste and to the tools, skills, and budget we have. Even if you get people to your site, a design that turns them off will send them packing before they give you a chance. Here are some common design mistakes I see on doula websites.

2. Does the page match what people expected?

Choose the right keywords. Imagine searching for a nanny and ending up on a site about birth doula care. You’d leave right away, right? When you choose the right keywords for your doula website, the families searching for your services are more likely to find you, and to stick around once they do. We can all remember searches where we had to muck through the results to find what we actually wanted. Don’t make your future clients do that.

Compare the promise to the page. Look at what Google shows for your page in search results: the title and the short description underneath. Now read your page. Does it deliver what that little preview promised?

If someone searches “how much does a doula cost in Denver,” lands on your Services page, and finds no mention of price, she’s probably leaving.

Watch for surprise traffic. Sometimes a page starts ranking for something you didn’t plan on. If lots of people land there looking for something the page doesn’t cover, you can:

• Add a section that answers their question
• Or write a new post on that topic and link to it

Be picky. Only go after that traffic if those visitors could someday become clients. A thousand visits from people who’ll never need a doula won’t fill your calendar.

3. Is the next step clear?

Make things easy to find. A lot of this comes back to good content that’s well organized. Break information into sections. Use clear headlines and subheadings. Add buttons that help people click through to what they need.

Give clear directions. Give visitors plenty of chances to learn more:

• Links to recent blog posts
• Contact or register buttons
• A newsletter signup or free offer
• Links in your text to other helpful pages

All of these guide visitors from the first page they land on to everything else your site has to offer.

Don’t send people away. Links to other sites are fine. Make sure visitors don’t get whisked away from your site by accident. If you link to your local doula association or a favorite cloth diaper store, set those links to open in a new tab. That way your site is still right there when they’re done.

Check your engagement time. GA4 also shows average engagement time, which is how long people actively spend on a page. Look at it next to your bounce rate:

• High bounce rate + long engagement time: People are reading! They aren’t sure what to do next. Add a clear, warm next step, like: “Curious what doula support could look like for you? Book a free consult.”
• High bounce rate + very short engagement time (a few seconds): People are leaving almost right away. Go back to step 1 and check your speed and your mobile view.

Start with the pages closest to booking. Your Services, About, Pricing or FAQ, and Contact pages matter most. A blog post with a high bounce rate can wait. A Services page that’s losing people can’t.

So do you really need to worry about your bounce rate?

Yes, and no.

I know you have a bajillion things on your to-do list that have a more direct impact on growing your business. Do those first.

But if you’re ready to dig into your website and see where it could work harder for you, bounce rate is a helpful clue. Think of it as a hint as to how people are interacting wiht your website. Some pages are built to answer a question and send people on their way. Others are built to move people toward booking with you. Know which is which, and you’ll know where to focus.

And there’s so much free information in Google Analytics about how people use your site. Why not take a peek and learn something new?