The formula
Divide the visits that bounced by all visits, and multiply by 100. If 1,000 sessions started on your pricing page and 420 of them ended there with no click, no scroll event and no second page, the page's bounce rate is 42%.
The number is only as good as the definition of "bounced", and that is where tools part ways.
Why two tools disagree
- Single-page visits. The older definition, used by Universal Analytics, counts any visit with one pageview. It is simple and it punishes a person who reads a whole article and leaves satisfied.
- Not engaged. GA4 turned the idea around. A session counts as engaged if it lasts more than 10 seconds, has a key event or has at least two page views, and its bounce rate is the share of sessions that were not engaged.
- One pageview and no interaction. trckable's definition: the visit had a single pageview and the person did nothing a goal or event could count.
- A time threshold. Some tools count a visit under a fixed number of seconds as a bounce, which makes a slow reader a bounce.
When you move from one tool to another, expect the rate to shift for this reason alone. Compare a tool with itself over time, not with a number from another tool.
How to read it
A bounce rate means something only next to the page's job.
- A how-to or an article often bounces high, because the answer is on the page. Judge it by time spent and by whether the person returns.
- A pricing or sign-up page should not bounce high. Here a rising rate is a warning.
- A landing page for paid traffic that bounces much more than your organic pages points to a mismatch between the promise in the ad and the page.
Split the rate by referrer and by device before drawing conclusions. A page can bounce at 80% from one source and 30% from another, and the average describes neither.
What to do about it
Do not set a target for the number. A site can lower it in a day by firing an interaction event on load, and learn nothing. Ask a different question: what should a visitor do next on this page, and can they see it?
Add the next step where the eye lands, load the page quickly on a phone, and make the first screen say what the page offers. Then count the thing you actually want, a click on the next step or a sign-up, as a goal, and watch its conversion rate instead. Bounce rate is a smoke alarm: useful for noticing, poor for deciding.
Try it in trckable
Bounce rate is one of the six numbers on top of the dashboard, for the period you pick. Click a source or a page and it shows the rate for those visits only. Read your dashboard
Related terms
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