What Bounce Rate Means and What it Can Tell You

There are many rubrics by which we judge general website effectiveness. One of the more useful metrics is the bounce rate. This metric can't be used universally, of course, but it can help you judge how effective certain pages of your site are.

What do we mean by bounce rate? A bounce occurs when a visitor to your site either leaves your site or lets their session time out. The bounce rate means something different depending on which page visitors are bouncing from.

When a visitor bounces from a contact page, for example, it means something very different than when they bounce from the home page. To view source of this site, follow the link. That's because it makes sense for someone to leave your site after visiting the contact page because it more than likely means that they found the information they were looking for and have no further need of your site at this time. If your site has a home page with a high bounce rate, however, it is more likely that your site is turning off visitors before they can get the information they want.

There are other sites for which a bounce means very little. For example, if you run a dictionary or encyclopedia site, it's very likely that visitors will view only the page they've entered the site by and no other ones. That's because the first page that the visitor goes to will be a deep page that they've accessed directly from a search engine. If you have a site that offers dictionary definitions, most visitors will come to your site via a search engine link seeking the definition of a single word and, once they've found that information, they will leave the site. Pages like this with a high bounce rate indicate not that there is a problem, but rather that your site is working exactly as it is supposed to. When visitors bounce at a high rate from the search results page of a site like this, however, it implies a problem.

Bounces from pages that are part of a multi-page sequence are  also indicative of a problem. Take a look at the detailed info about the bounce rate. Let's look at this scenario. Your site's home page directs visitors to another page to learn more and then directs them from that page to a page on which they can sign up for your mailing list. Once they've submitted their information, they are redirected to another page congratulating them on completing the process. Ideally, you want visitors to bounce only from the "Successfully Completed" page. If the bounce rate for any of the pages before this one are high, however, it can mean you've lost your visitors' interest before they've gotten as far through the process as you'd like.