What’s bounce rate, anyway?

by Ian on October 12, 2010
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Ah, one of the most-asked questions re: Web stats like Google Analytics. Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors that leave your website after viewing one page, i.e. they come to your site then “bounce” (bounce bounce come on bounce).  So, a bounce rate for any given page means that X% of people who landed on that page left without going to any other pages.

So that’s bad right?

Not necessarily. You’re right, it could mean that the page didn’t appeal to the visitor. But, it could be that the page answered all their questions and the visitor left satisfied. A good companion metric is “time on site”, like this:

If it’s reasonably high, then people are reading the page, whereas a low time probably means it’s not what the visitor was looking for.

Blogs are great examples of potentially misleading bounce rates. With most blogs you can read 7-10 posts without leaving the home page, so the bounce rate could be high, but that doesn’t mean people are just “bouncing” away. This is where time on site comes in handy.

So there you have it, bounce rates. Analyzing what they mean really depends on the situation and other metrics. Feel free to ask any question below.

10 thoughts on “What’s bounce rate, anyway?

  1. What’s a websites rake rate rattelsnake?

    Butch Loften on
  2. Thanks for your question Butch!

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  3. Please address my rattlesnake query in the context of websites.

    Butch Loften on
    • Holy shizint, this is so cool thank you.

      Clarinda on
  4. Well that’s a very interesting point, Butch.
    Websites are often like rattlesnakes because websites rattlesnakes websites rattlesnakes webnake rattlite. snake.

    • Frankly I think that’s abteulsoly good stuff.

      Andi on
  5. Excellent, I am satisfied and educated. Yet another customer becoming a better human by the hands of SayHitHere

    Butch Loften on
  6. What’s a bounce rate?

    Butch Loften on
  7. Thanks to have consulted for you, new business contact!

    Quick fix though: We’re actually Say Hit, the here was added in the url because we couldn’t get the right domain.

  8. Butch Loften on

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