Bounce Rate

Bounce rate is the percentage of website sessions that involve a single page and nothing else. Somebody arrives, looks, and leaves without clicking to another page or triggering a tracked action. In the older Universal Analytics, that single-page visit counted as a bounce no matter how long the person stayed.

That definition is the source of most confusion. A customer could land on your contact page, read it for two minutes, find your phone number, call you, and then close the tab. In the old model that is a bounce, even though it was a perfect outcome. This is why bounce rate has to be read with context, not treated as a grade.

For a single-page service site or a landing page whose only job is to drive a phone call, a high bounce rate is expected and fine. The visitor got what they needed on one page. For a blog post answering a specific question, a bounce often means the question was answered. The person read it and left satisfied.

Google's newer Analytics replaced bounce rate as the headline metric with engagement rate, which counts sessions that last longer than ten seconds, fire a conversion, or include multiple page views. Engagement rate is simply the inverse of an updated, more useful bounce definition. For most local businesses it is the better number to watch.

Bounce rate earns its keep as a comparison tool. The question is not whether the number is high in the abstract, but whether it is high for a page that should keep people moving.

Treat bounce rate as a starting question, not an answer. If a page that should lead somewhere is bouncing visitors, look at load speed, the clarity of the headline, whether the page matches the search that brought people there, and whether the next action is obvious. Fixing those is conversion work, and it usually lifts both engagement and the number of calls the page produces.