Bounce Rate is the percentage of website visitors who land on a page and leave without taking any further action — no second pageview, no click, no form submission. It's a top-of-session signal: did the page deliver enough relevance to keep the visitor engaged?
How bounce rate is calculated
Bounce Rate = Single-Page Sessions ÷ Total Sessions on the Page. If 1,000 people land on a page and 600 leave without interacting further, the bounce rate is 60%.
Note: GA4 changed how engagement is measured. In GA4, "engaged session" counts sessions over 10 seconds, with at least one conversion event, or with 2+ pageviews. Bounce rate in GA4 = 1 minus engagement rate, which produces slightly different numbers than legacy Universal Analytics.
Why bounce rate matters
High bounce rate on landing pages indicates a mismatch between visitor expectation and page content — they arrived, took a quick look, and decided this wasn't what they were looking for. For paid traffic, that mismatch is paid waste. For organic traffic, it usually signals weak intent matching with the search query.
What counts as a good bounce rate
Page-type and intent-dependent:
- Product pages: 20–40% is typical for ecommerce; below 20% usually indicates strong product-detail engagement, above 50% signals UX or relevance problems.
- Category pages: 30–50% range; merchandising depth and filter relevance drive the spread.
- Blog and content pages: 60–85% is common — content readers often answer their question and leave, which isn't necessarily bad.
- Landing pages from paid traffic: 30–60% range; paid ad-to-page mismatch is the usual cause of high bounce.
- Homepage: 25–45% is typical for ecommerce; varies heavily by traffic source mix.
What a poor bounce rate tells you
- Ad-to-page mismatch: the ad promised one thing, the page delivered another. The most common cause of high bounce on paid landing pages.
- Slow page load: visitors leave before the page finishes loading. Mobile is particularly vulnerable.
- Unclear value proposition: the page doesn't answer "what is this and why should I care" within the first screen.
- Wrong-intent traffic: the page is ranking for queries that don't match its content. Often an SEO problem more than a UX problem.
- Mobile UX issues: tap targets too small, popups blocking content, layout breaking on small screens.
How to improve bounce rate
- Match landing pages to ad creative. The ad headline, image, and offer should appear on the page within the first screen. Discontinuity drives bouncing.
- Optimise page load time. Below 2.5 seconds for largest contentful paint is the modern standard; every additional second pushes bounce rate up materially.
- Improve mobile experience specifically. Most ecommerce traffic is mobile. Bounce rate on mobile typically runs 1.3–1.6x desktop; closing that gap is usually the biggest lever.
- Audit search query alignment. Pages ranking for queries they don't really answer will always have high bounce, regardless of UX quality.
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