Bounce rate

Analytics

When looking at the number of monthly single-page sessions, there are a few other metrics you need to take into consideration, because not all those visits are worth as much as the other. And this is why bounce rate is crucial to optimize.

Here's everything you need to know about bounce rate.

TRACK YOUR BOUNCE RATE

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Templates using this KPI
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Integrations using this KPI

What is a bounce rate?

The definition of bounce rate is the percentage of a web page's total visits, with the visitor leaving, or clicking the back button without taking an action, such as clicking on a call to action (CTA), visiting a second page, or filling out a form in a certain time period. There is an individual bounce rate per individual page, and there is also an overall bounce rate that serves as an average from the whole website.

It is not to be confused with the exit rate. Here's how to better understand the difference between the two:

Bounce rate measures the number of website visitors who enter and exit without visiting any other page on the website.
Exit rate measures the number of users who exit a website from a specific page, regardless of page views.

Both of them are good measures of engagement for a website and you want to keep them as low as possible. You read that right, achieving the highest bounce rate possible shouldn't be your goal.

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How to calculate your bounce rate

To calculate a page's bounce rate, the total number of one-page visits is divided by the total number of entries to a website. For example, if your home page receives 500 visitors this month, but 250 of those leave without clicking on a second page, your homepage's bounce rate would be 50%.

Don't sweat it, you don't need to manually calculate it: Google Analytics does it for you!

What is a good bounce rate?

Good bounce rate: low bounce rate.

When looking at the industry's benchmark, the bounce rate differs widely. The definition of a “good” bounce rate is also subjective based on the type of page, and the source of traffic. Most website bounce rates fall somewhere between 25% and 75%. But having a 50% bounce rate isn't necessarily a bad thing. According to a report, the average Bounce Rate range is between 41 and 51%. It's almost unachievable to get a lower bounce rate than 20%, and you might check if you have a tracking problem.

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What is a bad bounce rate?

Bad bounce rate: high bounce rate.

A high bounce rate means that your visitors are leaving your website quickly, and you want to keep that number low, around the 35-40 mark. To achieve that, you need to optimize the SERP, your web pages, and your user experience. More on that later.

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Bounce rate KPI examples & templates

Your bounce rate can be (and should be) added to multiple different types of reports. Here are some of them:

See this KPI in action here!

See this KPI in action here!

Google analytics report template

A report with all the most important metrics for your SEO strategy. Track all your web analytics, from single-page data, page load time, organic searches, and more.

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Digital marketing report template

From SEO to social media and PPC, this report gives you a good view of all your online marketing strategy metrics and overall online performance.

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Ecommerce report template

A report with all the most important metrics for your eCommerce site, like shopping cart abandonment, click-through rate, and revenue. Optimize your product pages to get better results in your report!

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Bounce rate best practices

Here are some of the best practices you should keep in mind while optimizing your website's bounce rate. Don't forget to add a tracking code (or a custom plugin) on GA to measure your efforts!

Optimize the SERP

It all starts with the meta description, which can be found on the search engine result page, no matter if it's an organic or a paid search. They are a good indication of what can be found on a page and believe it or not, people read them. The ranking factor is actually important because Google uses relevancy for its algorithm, so ranking high in the result can help with bounce rates. Other optimizations can include usability and page speed.

Boost user engagement on your landing pages

Your site's content is king. Focus on content marketing and find out search intents to optimize copywriting. Focus on user engagement by having engaging CTAs that lead to other internal links, playing with pop-ups, doing some a/b testing, adding white space to let your page breathe, optimizing your site's design, and making sure your potential customers land on a page that has the best possible probability to convert them. Don't neglect the importance of your landing pages.

Check performance by device and network

If you have a higher bounce rate, or even if you're doing pretty good, you need to make sure all pages are well optimized for different networks and devices. More and more people are visiting websites from mobile devices so it's important that these versions are user-friendly for those mobile users.

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Bounce Rate Synonyms

Although bounce rate is widely used, there are multiple synonyms that can be used. Here are a few:

Bounce ratio, Bounce %, Bounce rate (%), Average bounce rate, Website bounce rate, Campaign bounce rate, Overall bounce rate, Page bounce rate, Session bounce rate, Site-wide bounce rate