A bounce rate is a web analytic metric that measures the percentage of visitors who leave the site after looking at only one page without further interacting with the website. Bounce is an activity where a user comes to the website and leaves without interacting with other pages or elements like forms, buttons, or links on the site.
Bounce rate is calculated as a number of single-page sessions divided by the total number of sessions on the website. For example, if a website received 1,000 visits and in 600 of those visits, only one page was viewed, then the bounce rate equates to 60% (600/1,000 = 0.6 or 60%).
High bounce rate may signal the following host of issues, including but not limited to:
- Inadequate or poor website design or user experience.
- Slow loading time.
- Irrelevant or low-quality content.
- Misleading meta descriptions or titles that don't accord with the content, but instead exist to deceive.
- Technical errors or broken links.
However, context always matters in these situations. High bounces are acceptable on single-page sites, blogs, news articles, or in general, on any site which has a single element, and which people don't scroll down past.
What website owners can do to improve bounce rates:
- Optimize page load times.
- Ensure the website is mobile-friendly and responsive.
- Enhance navigation and user experience.
- Create engaging, relevant, and high-quality content.
- Use clear calls-to-action (CTAs) to encourage further web exploration by the visitors.
- Ensure the content of the page is accurately reflected in the meta descriptions and titles.
Understanding bounce rates enables businesses to grasp user behaviors from analytics and, therefore, be informed when optimizing their sites based on data-driven decisions.