Bounce rate

Bounce rate is the percentage of visits in which people leave your website without engaging with it. A high bounce rate on a homepage or landing page often means the first impression didn't convince visitors to stay.

How it is measured

The exact definition depends on your analytics tool:

• Google Analytics 4 counts a visit as engaged when it lasts longer than 10 seconds, includes a key event (such as a purchase or sign-up), or has at least two page views. Bounce rate is the share of visits that were not engaged.
• Universal Analytics, the older version of Google Analytics, counted a bounce as a visit with only one page view, regardless of how long the visitor stayed.

Because of this difference, bounce rates from different tools or periods are not always comparable.

What a high bounce rate can mean

A bounce is not always bad. Someone who looks up your opening hours and leaves got what they came for. But on a page meant to lead somewhere, a high bounce rate often points to a first-impression problem:

• Visitors don't understand what you offer
• The page doesn't look trustworthy or professional
• The page doesn't match what the visitor searched for or clicked on
• There is no clear next step
• The page loads too slowly

Analytics tells you that, not why

Your bounce rate shows that people leave, but not why. To find out, you need to see the page through a visitor's eyes. Start with the first impression checklist, or let strangers rate your homepage on StayOrBounce: their answers to four short questions point to the reason they would leave.