Single Page Visits: Is “Bounce Rate” Good or Bad?

A person comes to your website looks at one page and exits.  Whether this is good or bad depends entirely on your goals, and your goals will vary from page to page.  For this reason, using bounce-rate as a page-level metric can be helpful and as a site-wide measure can be misleading.  

Before we explore further, what do I mean by bounce?  A bounce occurs when a session ends after viewing only one page. It can be calculated in summary for the entire site by dividing single page visits by total visits or on the page level by dividing single page visits for that page by the total entry visits for that page.  Some analytics tools calculate bounce rate automatically, saving the time and trouble.

When is a High Bounce Rate is Good?

A high bounce rate is desirable when the goal of a page is to deliver information to the visitor, often to answer a specific question.  Once the answer is read, the visitor completes the task and does not need to view other pages.  A common page of this type is the Contact Us page where the visitor finds the phone number and accomplishes the task.  In this case, the faster you can help the visitor complete the task the better so seeing a bounce rate rise is representative of good performance on the page.  You may also see that the page is frequently bookmarked providing a strong repeat visitor base.

When is a Low Bounce Rate is Good?

On the other hand, a low bounce rate is desirable when the goal of a page is to generate leads, produce sales or drive engagement with content.   In this case, the goal of the page is to raise interest and drive interaction with the website so if the visitor moves on to another page on the site, then the page performed well.  For pages like these, driving toward a lower bounce rate is desirable.  

Recommendation

It is very helpful to put site-wide bounce rate to use as an index to pick up on any sharp movements with the introduction of new campaigns and new releases.  It can be a beacon when used internally and compared to its own past performance.

If you are able, define the goals on a page-by-page level and track the bounce rate for those pages.  This does not need to be done for the entire site, but it can be great for the handful of key pages.  If you find it is high when it should be low or low when it should be high, then you can begin to take steps with content and layout to help the page perform better.