What is a Bounce Rate and What Does it Mean?

If you’ve spent any time at all playing around with Google Analytics, you’ve probably seen a statistic for “bounce rate.” On paper, a bounce rate is simple – it’s the percentage of people that leave your website after only viewing one page. In practice, however, it’s a little bit more confusing. What’s a “good” versus a “bad” bounce rate? When do you need to worry about it?

We’re here today to get to the bottom of bounce rates once and for all.

What is a Bounce Rate?

Google defines a bounce rate as:

A bounce is a single-page session on your site. In Analytics, a bounce is calculated specifically as a session that triggers only a single request to the Analytics server, such as when a user opens a single page on your site and then exits without triggering any other requests to the Analytics server during that session.

Bounce rate is single-page sessions divided by all sessions, or the percentage of all sessions on your site in which users viewed only a single page and triggered only a single request to the Analytics server.

In plain English, a bounce is someone leaving your site after only viewing one page. Bounce rate is the number of overall percentage of visitors who bounced.

What is A “Good” Bounce Rate?

The truthful answer? It’s complicated. A good bounce rate varies by industry, brand size, type of page, customer stage in the buyer’s journey, user intent…and more. In general, these are the guidelines from Google on what to expect for an average bounce rate:

• 40-60% Content websites
• 30-50% Lead generation sites
• 70-98% Blogs
• 20-40% Retail sites
• 10-30% Service sites
• 70-90% Landing pages

Again, these numbers aren’t solidly set in stone but they are a good reference point when looking at your own pages.

What Should I Do If My Bounce Rate is High?

A high bounce rate isn’t always a bad thing. What’s most important is visitor experience and conversions. If your visitors are running to your site to mine information or fill out and landing page, then quickly leaving – the high bounce rate doesn’t matter because at the end of the day you’re still landing a sale from that visitor.

The first thing you should look at is your overall bounce rate versus your bounce rate on specific pages. If you notice specific pages have a much higher bounce rate, dig further into them to see where you’re missing people. A high bounce rate on a contact us page isn’t uncommon – but if a high bounce rate on your homepage could point to trouble. Look at the design of the page, the content on the page and the calls-to-action. Are they all appealing to your visitor? You may find gaps where you can improve your site to lower your bounce rate on that page. If your bounce rate is high site-wide, it may be time to look into a redesign.

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