FYI, I just published another post that you may find helpful with your website: 15 Questions to Measure the Success of Your Home Page:
http://www.startupnation.com/blogs/index.php/2009/05/26/15-questions-to-measure-the-strength-of-your-home-page/

Your website is a great cause, and I thank you for your efforts in putting it together!

-Tom

In addition to your examples, one may find low Bounce Rates and high conversion rates from specific sources, and this may be an indicator to increase investment towards such sources through advertising, promotion, sponsorship, partnership or other form of marketing investment to fully capitalize on the market opportunity from such source.

-Tom

It’s important to consider where the visitor came from, and what key words they were using, when they found your site.

I’ve discovered on my own sites that certain referral sources or key words result in a 100% bounce rate. But I’m okay with that because they clearly weren’t looking for what I offer (For example, I wrote a blog post about Pizza Hut’s natural pizza, and whether that was a good marketing strategy for them or not. Folks searching for Pizza Hut natural pizza and landing on my blog are likely not part of my target market so they should bounce).

People who come to my site from the right referral sources and key words tend to stick around and take action. Anyone searching for small business marketing tips or ideas, and folks who come to my sites via my online articles or social networking profiles generally find what they’re after on my Website. In those instances my bounce rate is always 50% or less.

Just more food for though…

Warmest,
Stacy

Stacy Karacostas
Practical Marketing Expert

Again, though, most conversion events (sale, request for info, lead-capture, registration, download, etc.) involve more than one Page View, and so in that sense, a high Bounce Rate could be a danger sign. And as mentioned above, a publisher or blog relying on ad sales is going to want to drive multiple Page Views in order to increase ad rates.

Also, I personally view Bounce Rates as an excellent basis for testing. Let’s say that you have high conversion rates, but a high Bounce Rate as well. This to me indicates an opportunity to test various elements on your web pages to verify if you could juice your conversion rates further with a lower Bounce Rate. Testing can produce results that can be hard to predict, and so testing is often highly worthwhile.

Hope this is helpful.
Tom

I think you need to go deeper than this, though, when correlating it to Bounce Rates. Think, even if there is significant content or several blog posts on a single page, is a single-page view the ideal visitor experience? How does it align to your business model and website objectives?

The blog post speaks to Bounce Rates in relation to business websites. A business website should have a clear objective, whether a sale, lead-capture, subscription sign-up, store locator request, trial download, registration, etc. These types of conversion events typically involve more than one page view. Even with a blog or publisher relying on ad sales, most of these sites can charge higher ad rates with higher Page Views, and so reducing Bounce Rates is going to be important to the business.

Hope that this is helpful.
Tom

For example … if your site is a tightly focused niche and each page focuses on one unique product would it not be unusual to have a high bounce rate?

Think about this for a while. If your site has a high bounce rate and visitors stay for a few minutes and conversions are great then a high bounce rate is welcome. This means each page is unique enough that the search engines have it well indexed and people do not have to search around on your site. In other words 100% bounce rate with high conversions and a visitor stay of several minutes can be a great thing.

Would this inflate bounce rate? If so, would Time on Site be a better indicator? Both are important, but wonder if a high bounce rate can be deceiving as well.

http://yoast.com/wordpress/google-analytics/

You can find a number of other useful WordPress plugins listed in the following StartupNation article as well:

http://www.startupnation.com/articles/9407/1/wordpress-plugins-superpower-your-blog.htm

Hope this is helpful.
Tom