Bounce Rate

What is the bounce rate and what does it mean?

The bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who leave your website without visiting another subpage. With this indicator, there is always only one page view. It is an important key figure in online business and is considered a measurement for the quality of the visit. A high bounce rate is an indication that areas of your website are irrelevant or that the user did not find what he was looking for on your site. In general, you should see a high bounce rate as an opportunity to optimize your site. Maybe you can improve the loading time, navigation or structure of your website. This will make it easier for the user to browse your site, which in turn will increase the time the visitor spends on your site.

How is the bounce rate calculated?

The bounce rate is calculated by dividing the visitors who left your website after only one page view by all visitors of your site. If the calculated number is then e.g. 35% this means that 35% of all users have visited only one page and then left your website again.

However, you don’t have to calculate the bounce rate yourself. You can also find it in your Google Analytics account under Behavior > Overview. In addition to the page views and the average time on the page, you will also find the bounce rate and the percentage of exits.

What is a high bounce rate and what is normal?

The question of a high or normal bounce rate is not one that can be answered across the board. Generally, a low bounce rate is better, as this means that visitors to your site will click through the various subpages. However, it always depends on what you show on the entry page, which is the page that the user sees first. If the entry page is an informative article, like this post here, it’s normal that the rate is higher because the visitor leaves the page after getting the information they need.  If the entry page is an online shop, the bounce rate should be lower, as the user should browse through the different categories. Thus, depending on the type and content of your website, you need to evaluate whether it is too high, normal or good bounce rate.

How can you improve your bounce rate?

If you come to the conclusion that your bounce rate is too high, there are several ways to optimize your site and thus lower the rate. Which option is actually suitable for you and your site has to be decided depending on the industry. Here we show you a few common examples:

• Provide the reader good and informative content with internal links to other categories or posts.
• Check if your page is clearly designed. Is a clear navigation missing, which refers the user to categories?
• Look for a low page load time, for example, through compressed images.
• Optimize your site for users who access it with a smartphone – keyword “Mobile First”.

What is the difference between bounce rate and exit rate?

As you now know, bounce rate is about the visitors who visit your site and leave without clicking on a subpage. The exit rate shows you how often a specific page was the last one the user visited before leaving your site. It is irrelevant how many pages he has visited before. So two or ten subpages can have been clicked through before the visitor left. An exit is counted when the browser window is closed, another domain is entered in the search line or back to the search engine is clicked. If you look at the figure, you can see that this particular page has a bounce rate of 72.72% and from this page 63.53% visitors have exited.