Bounce rate

What is a bounce rate?

A 'bounce' happens when someone lands on your website, has a quick look and leaves without clicking anything or visiting another page. The bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who do this. 🚪

A high website bounce rate can be a sign that your website isn't giving visitors what they're looking for. Maybe the page took too long to load, the design wasn't appealing, or the content didn't match what they expected to find.

That said, bounce rate isn't always a bad thing. If someone lands on a contact page, finds your phone number and calls you — that counts as a bounce, even though they took action.

Use bounce rate as one signal among many. Pair it with other metrics like time on page and conversion rate to get the full picture.

How to calculate bounce rate?

Bounce rate is calculated by dividing the number of single-page sessions (or unengaged sessions) by the total number of sessions on your website, then multiplying the result by 100 to get a percentage. In other words, it measures the percentage of site visitors who land on a page and leave without interacting further or visiting any other pages.

The formula for bounce rate is:

Bounce Rate = (Number of Single Page Visits / Total Number of Visits) × 100

For example, if your website had 1,000 visitors in a given time period and 400 of them left after viewing only one page, your bounce rate would be 40%.

This metric helps you understand how well your website's content and user experience engage visitors. A high bounce rate may indicate issues such as poor content relevance, slow page load time, or a confusing layout that discourages users from exploring more pages.

You can find bounce rate data for your entire site or individual pages using web analytics tools like Google Analytics. In Google Analytics, bounce rate is typically shown as the percentage of single-page sessions where users did not interact with the page beyond the initial visit.