Bounce rate

What it means

Bounce rate says what share of visits ended with no further action: no click, no scroll, no form. In itself it is neither good nor bad.

On a page answering one question a high figure is natural: the visitor found what they came for and left satisfied. On a campaign landing page it signals a problem.

The bounce rate should not be confused with the exit rate. The exit rate says how many visits ended on a given page, even after passing through several others. A high exit rate on a thank-you page after a completed conversion is fine, a high bounce rate on a campaign’s entry page is not.

How it works in practice

Compare it by traffic source. If organic traffic bounces less than paid, the ad promises something the page does not deliver and money is chasing the wrong demand.

Three causes dominate: slow loading, a mismatch between ad and content, and no obvious next step. Speed fixes the first, copy the second, a clear call to action the third.

On an accounting firm’s website, an article about the tax return deadline naturally has a high bounce rate: the reader checks the date and leaves. The pricing page is a different case; if people leave it without clicking through to contact, a change to the text or the form is tested with an A/B test, not guessed.

What to watch out for

The number is easy to distort through analytics settings. Add an event firing after a few seconds and the rate halves without anything on the page improving.

With little traffic the figure fluctuates at random. A page with a few dozen visits a month can have a low bounce rate one month and double that the next without anything on it changing. Conclusions are therefore drawn from a longer period and a larger number of visits, and in web analytics the trend is watched, not a single month.