Bounce rate

Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who leave a webpage immediately after only visiting one page.

So a bounce rate of 50% would mean that half of the people who visited a website looked at just one webpage, and then left (‘bounced’).

Generally speaking, a lower bounce rate is good, as it suggests that visitors ‘stick around’ with your website. A high bounce rate can imply that visitors took a quick look at your website, and decided it wasn’t worth exploring.

In reality, it isn’t always so simple. Some visitors may be looking for a specific piece of information – say your phone number – and if they get it right away this is a good user experience, not a bad one. So here, a high bounce rate would not be a bad thing; if users continue to explore your website it could in fact be a sign of frustration.

In the vast majority of cases though, a higher bounce rate is undesirable. Using Silktide, we recommend you benchmark your bounce rate against your competitors, and aim to make it lower. Silktide can show you an approximate measure of the bounce rate for any given website, including competing websites that you don’t control. See the Popularity screen for details.