Bounce Rate: What It Is And How To Fix Yours

Do you know your website’s bounce rate?

A lot of marketers make the mistake of only paying attention to metrics like traffic, click-through rate and conversions, but bounce rate can actually tell you a lot about why a page has fewer conversions than others.

In this page, we cover what bounce rate is and how to improve it.

What is bounce rate?

Bounce rate is a metric that determines how many of your visitors leave your website without converting or visiting another page. It’s presented as a percentage.

For example, if your bounce rate is 65%, then 65% of your visitors leave your website without converting or visiting another page.

Bounce rate is a metric you can track in Google Analytics and other analytics tools.

How is bounce rate calculated in Google Analytics?

Google Analytics (GA) defines bounce rate as “the percentage of sessions that were not engaged.”

A session in Google Analytics is the period of time in which a user interacts with your site. It initiates when the user first visits your site and ends when they leave. If they don’t leave, it ends after 30 minutes of inactivity.

GA defines an “engaged session” as a session that meets any of these criteria:

  • Lasts 10 seconds or longer
  • Has two or more screen views or page views
  • Has a key event*

*A key event is an action a user takes on your page. You can create key events in GA to track specific actions, such as scrolling to a specific percentage of the page, signing up for your email list or completing a form.

Bounce rate vs exit rate and engagement rate

Google advises webmasters to not confuse bounce rate with exit rate or engagement rate.

Whereas bounce rate is defined by the percentage of sessions that did not end in another page view or an interaction with your website, exit rate is defined by the percentage of users who left a page after landing on it versus the total number of users who visited that page.

Engagement rate is defined by the percentage of engaged sessions your site had versus the total number of sessions it had.

Why should you monitor your site’s bounce rate?

Here’s why bounce rate is important:

  • Users who leave your website without interacting with it or visiting another page did not convert.
  • A high bounce rate signals something about your website or content that users don’t like.
  • Bounce rate is a Google ranking factor, so if you want to rank on Google, you need to improve it.

Bounce rate is like body temperature. A high fever lets you know that there’s an infection somewhere in your body. You then need to go to the doctor to determine where.

Bounce rate works in the same way.

If it’s high, it means something is wrong with your site, well enough to the point where users are not sticking around long enough to view more of your content or interact with your opt-in forms.

Therefore, it’s an important metric to track. It gives you a baseline on your site’s performance in terms of user experience and the quality of your content.

What is a good bounce rate?

Here are three average bounce rate metrics from three different sources:

Average Bounce Rate
CXL53.72%*
Siege Media50.90%
Databox58.39%*

*This site gave no official average bounce rate metric, so this number was calculated by adding up each industry average reported by the website and dividing by the number of industry averages the site gave.

This means if your site’s bounce rate is around 50%, you meet what’s typical for most websites in the world.

If your site’s bounce rate is lower than 50%, you’re outperforming most websites in the world.

If it’s higher than 50%, you’re in trouble and should analyze your site a little more closely.

Average bounce rates by industry

In CXL’s study, the company compiled average bounce rates from 23 different industries. They discovered that the industry with the highest average bounce rate was the food and drink industry with an average bounce rate of 65.52%.

The industry with the lowest average bounce rate was the real estate industry with 44.5%.

In Siege Media’s study, the company analyzed 1.3 billion sessions from 42 different client websites in eight different industries.

In their study, the industry with the highest average bounce rate was the travel industry at 82.58%. The industry with the lowest average bounce rate was the real estate industry with 40.78%.

In Databox’s study, the company analyzed bounce rate metrics from 15 different industries.

They discovered the industry with the highest average bounce rate as being the construction industry with 67.24% and the industry with lowest as being real estate with 46.86%.

How to fix this metric

There are several ways to fix your site’s bounce rate metric, such as improving its performance or even improving your content.

It also helps to analyze your site for performance issues.

1. Determine which pages have the highest bounce rates

Google Analytics has a comparison view, which you can use while viewing each page on your website.

You can use this view to compare the bounce rates of each page on your website.

If a page’s bounce rate is high, it’s going to affect your site’s average bounce rate.

You can optimize your entire site, but if you feel your site is already optimized, you may find optimizing individual pages to be much more effective.

2. Improve page speed across your entire site

Use tools like Google PageSpeed Insights, Pingdom, GTmetrix and WebPageTest to test the performance of your website.

Be sure to test your homepage as well as an individual blog post.

google pagespeed insights the kitchn

These tools will give you benchmarks to work with as well as suggestions on what needs to be improved on your website.

Here are a few quick tips on improving page load speed on your site:

  • Use reliable web hosting, preferably cloud hosting
  • Add a content delivery network (CDN) to your site, if your host doesn’t offer this for you
  • Use a well-coded design. This means using a lightweight, reliable theme or template if you use a content management system (CMS), such as WordPress
  • Optimize images by using smaller images and compressing images
  • Use a speed optimization plugin for WordPress, such as NitroPack
  • If you don’t have WordPress or do not want to install a speed optimization plugin:
    • Implement caching
    • Minify CSS and JS files
    • Implement GZIP compression
    • Implement lazy loading for images

3. Use heatmaps to understand user behavior

A heatmap is a user experience (UX) tool that lets you view anonymous browsing sessions on your website.

You’ll be able to see where users click the most on a landing page, how far they’re scrolling down the page, which parts of your page receive the highest engagements and more.

Mouseflow is a popular heatmap tool worth checking out.

4. Add internal links to your blog posts

It’s possible there’s a simple reason why your site has a high bounce rate: you don’t give anywhere else for your visitors to go. Therefore, they visit only one page on your site.

You should be publishing blog posts that relate to one another. You should also be linking to related posts on your site from other posts. Here’s an example from Blogging Wizard:

blogging wizard internal links

These are called internal links, and they encourage visitors to visit other pages on your website in order to learn more about specific topics.

5. Improve your site’s navigation

It’s also possible that your site’s main navigation menu is too plain.

Instead of using the plain Home – Blog – About – Contact layout, try adding options that point users toward specific pieces of content.

nerdfitness navigation menu

These options might include:

  • Start Here
  • Success Stories
  • Customer Stories
  • Case Studies
  • Guides
  • Tutorials
  • Reviews
  • Resources

You can also add niche-specific categories to your navigation menu.

You might also consider adding products and services to your site so you can include links like “Shop,” “Books, “Courses,” and “Request a Free Quote.”

6. Experiment with different types of opt-in forms

A lot of internet users just want answers and solutions for their problems. This is why Google’s search engine results page (SERP) now includes AI overviews and SEO snippets.

So, when users aren’t able to access answers on your website, they leave.

Things that may block users’ view on your website include intrusive ads and opt-in forms that popup as soon as users land on your website.

Experiment with different email opt-in forms to see which ones result in a low bounce rate and high conversion rate.

7. Use lead magnets with opt-in forms

Lead magnets are something you offer to your reader in exchange for their email address.

If they subscribe to your email list, they’ll receive their free offer in their inbox.

Content upgrades are the best type of lead magnet to offer with opt-in forms that are inserted on blog post pages.

Common content upgrades include checklists, ebooks, email courses, interactive challenges, case studies and PDF guides.

If you offer products and services, you can also offer free trials, free consultations and discount codes.

8. Provide a quick answer to each post’s question

Again, if users aren’t able to find an answer to the problem they’re having as soon as they land on your site, they’re going to leave.

You can elaborate on the topic you’re writing about as much as you want in your post, but you should also provide a quick answer toward the top of the page.

Provide the answer in a brief summary. Here’s another example from Blogging Wizard:

blogging wizard summary

If you’re writing a list post, pick out the top two to five options on the list, and highlight them.

These practices may even encourage Google to use your content in a snippet.

9. Add a table of contents to each post

A table of contents that includes each heading in your post with jumplinks to each is the perfect way to ensure your visitor can find the information they’re looking for in your post.

Sure, Google now scrolls to the exact sentence the user viewed on the SERP, but it’s still a simple UX element you can add to your website.

You can even use a floating table of contents that scrolls with the user.

10. Make sure each blog post matches search intent

Clickbait is rampant on the internet. It’s a frowned upon user engagement tactic that involves misrepresenting a piece of content in the content’s title or thumbnail/featured image in order to increase clicks for it.

If you use this tactic on your blog, even by mistake, you’ll receive a higher website bounce rate.

To prevent this from happening, make sure each post you publish that targets a specific keyword matches the search intent of that keyword.

So, if you’re writing a post on the “best boats for fishing,” your post should include a list of boats you feel are best for fishing, period.

It should not include a list of boats you feel are best for fishing on a specific lake or for a specific species of fish.

11. Make your blog easier to read

Here are ways you can make your blog easier to read:

  • Use smaller paragraphs. Consider what long paragraphs look like on mobile devices
  • Use bullet points for lists
  • Break up long series of paragraphs with images
  • Use images to present data

12. Improve your site’s mobile design

Optimize your site’s design for mobile or create a separate mobile version of your site.

If you’re using a page builder, you can use its Visibility feature to show/hide different elements by device type.

For example, you can show a landscape image on desktop and a portrait version on mobile.

If you use the WordPress block editor, you can use the Block Visibility plugin to do this. That’s if you’re not using another blocks plugin that includes this option.

13. Enable comments on your site

Blogs don’t want to deal with moderation, spam or “haters.” And so, they disable the comment sections on their sites.

Unfortunately, the comment section is a hub for user engagement.

Try enabling yours to see if it improves your site’s bounce rate.

14. User fewer or no advertisements

There’s no shame in using ads on your site. You work hard on your blog, and you deserve to be paid for it.

Unfortunately, ads cause performance issues. Some even block content. Or they shift the layout around so much that it’s near impossible to actually read the content.

If your bounce rate is high, try cutting back on the number of advertisements you use on a single page.

Final thoughts

Bounce rate is a nuanced metric. If it’s high, that usually indicates a problem but it’s important to consider the nuance of how different traffic sources impact your bounce rate.

For example, sending traffic from email newsletters usually results in a high bounce rate regardless.

In this case, it doesn’t indicate a problem as such. It may just mean that these visitors have already engaged with your other content and CTAs already.

Although, for most other traffic sources like search engine traffic or paid advertising, this would indicate a problem. In which case, work through the steps we’ve listed above.

Related reading: