Bounce rate, explained

By
Angie Herrera

As defined by [Wikipedia](http://www.wikipedia.org/), [bounce rate](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bounce_Rate) > represents the average percentage of initial visitors to a site who "bounce" away to a different site, rather than continue on to other pages within the same site. For instance, say a user lands on your home page and then does one of the following: - clicks on the "back" button to the page that took them to your page, - closes the window or tab they're viewing your page in, - they type in a new URL, - or they click on a link to a different site. That user has just bounced off your site. Looking at it from a different angle, bounce rate can tell you how "sticky" your page is. If it's sticky (i.e., keeps people on the page and gets them clicking to other parts of your site), your bounce rate will be low. This is a good thing. #### What's a high bounce rate? Hate to say it, but it all depends. It'll depend on your industry, the type of site you have, your audience, etc. That said, if your bounce rate is well about the 50-60% mark, your site could probably use some work. #### What it means for site performance Now that you know what bounce rate means, how do you analyze it? It's not as difficult as you may think. If you're getting decent traffic to any part of your site but your bounce rate is high then there is some work to do. A high bounce rate could mean any of the following: - the ad that took the visitor to that page doesn't qualify the right audience or is targeted at the wrong audience, - the offer on the page the person got to doesn't live up to its promise, - visitors aren't connecting with the offer or the content, - or your site might just be unusable or confusing. Any of those are easy to fix. But the first three require tweaking and reviewing a few times to see what proves to be successful. The last one is more of a technical issue and a usability issue that you should probably hire a professional for. In any case, it's a good idea to keep an eye on your site's bounce rate (especially the bounce rate of individual pages). Just don't become obsessed with it. As always, it's better to focus on conversion.