The bounce rate analytics is a very interesting metric to measure. It says a lot about your web page or your e-shop. But why is is to important and what even is this “bounce rate”?

The most important question. Since everybody is talking about it, let’s define bounce rate. It is a metric that can be measured for example in Google Analytics. First, bounce is one-page session on a web page. That means that a person visits a page but does not click anywhere else and is only on that one page.

Since Google cannot calculate the length of a session when a visitor doesn’t click anywhere else, the session counts for 0 seconds.

This bounce metric is then calculated with a formula to give us bounce rate. Bounce rate is calculated as a number of visitors on one given page divided by all the visitors on the page. It is calculated in percentage and the higher percentage you get, the more users leave your page without clicking on anything else.

However, don’t worry that you will ever have to use this scary looking formula. Google Analytics got you covered.

Now that you know what bounce rate represents and how to figure it out thanks to a formula, how to tell the ideal bounce rate? Well, it may not be that easy. No guide will ever tell you what bounce rate a web page should have.

Every web is different and serves a different purpose. Let’s say your bounce rate is 85%. Pretty bad, huh? Well, if you have a one-page web or a contact page, there is not many places to go, so, goal reached, good job.

But what if you have an e-commerce page and your goal is to keep a visitor for the longest time, and most important, crawl through as many pages as possible? Something is wrong and you have to invest some time on your web.

First, you have to understand what your page is trying to tell you. You can collect data from several perspectives:

If you find out only a few of your pages produce a high bounce rate, examine them. Maybe they are supposed to have a high bounce rate. If not, maybe the page design is not very user friendly or the visitors can’t find what they have been looking for.

If you have a high bounce rate from a Google Ads campaign, check your landing pages. There is a possibility that content on a landing page doesn’t correspond with the visitor’s intent. Play with keywords and find your more about your customers. If your overall bounce rate is high and it shouldn’t be, you may want to look into your web design. Is it intuitive enough, is it easy and simple to navigate, is it really what people are looking for?