Bounce Rate: The Good, the Bad, and the Average

For the TL;DR folks, this post covers:

What is the bounce rate?

What is a good bounce rate?

What’s the average bounce rate?

Bounce rates inflated/deflated by broken analytics configurations

What’s a bad bounce rate?

How to establish a good starting point for measuring bounce rates for your website

Average mobile bounce rates

We personally go over analytics data with our clients every so often. The reviews essentially function like a doctor’s checkup for a website. If everything looks good, great. So long, see you at your next appointment. If not, we can provide some suggestions on how to regain momentum.

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I usually like to start with the audience overview report in Google Analytics. Of course, the audience overview report is just the tip of the iceberg, but it’s a good jumping off point for explaining the essential metrics in Google Analytics: bounce rate, unique visitors, visit duration, pageviews, returning vs. new visits, etc.

Clients ask about bounce rate almost invariably. It’s fairly simple to deduce what pageviews, pages/visit, and visits mean. Explaining the concept of bounce rate isn’t always straightforward.

I’ve been thinking about addressing some common questions from our blog reviews, and starting with bounce rate seems like a good idea.

What Is Bounce Rate? (And Why Google Has It Wrong)

bounce rate bounce rate as the percentage of single-page visits to a website, but this definition isn’t entirely accurate.

However, I typically go with Google’s definition in meetings because it’s concise, even though the full explanation isn’t usually necessary and doesn’t often contribute much to the discussion.

The Correct Definition of Bounce Rate

In Google Analytics, bounce rate is actually the percentage of single interaction visits to a website. A pageview is typically the most common second interaction on many websites, but there are other potential interactions like events and transactions that also influence bounce rate.

Additionally, events can be set as “non-interaction,” meaning they won’t impact bounce rate. This means that a bounce could include multiple user actions.

Events can also be set to “non-interaction” so they don’t affect bounce rate. So, a bounce could even include multiple actions taken by the user.

What’s a Good Bounce Rate?

It is very common for clients to ask us what a good bounce rate is, or what the average bounce rate is. In the past, I’ve usually offered an answer supported by my own anecdotal evidence. I figured it was probably time to put my intuition to the test. (obligatory meme thing of a cat saying something to the right)

I pulled the analytics data stretching back over roughly a year for a relatively small sample of websites (about 60) and averaged them out. The domains were picked at random. Most were clients. Some were not. Some profiles had 1,000,000+ unique visitors, some with only a few thousand. Some have active internet marketing campaigns. The majority do not. The sample set is all over the place.

What’s the Average Bounce Rate?

Typically, bounce rates for most websites range between 26% and 70%. In my sample set, the average bounce rate was 49%, while for all visits, it was 45%. Outliers like 1% bounce rates were excluded. The highest recorded bounce rate was 90.2%, while the lowest from a properly functioning profile was 27.33%. The overall lowest, including broken implementations, was 1.23%.

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As a general guideline, a bounce rate falling within 26% to 40% is considered excellent. 41 to 55 percent is roughly average. 56 to 70 percent is higher than average, but may not be cause for alarm depending on the website. Anything over 70 percent is disappointing for everything outside of blogs, news, events, etc.

The chart above plots out the number of websites that fell within a particular range from the sample set. The most common range (range being a 5% increment) was between 35 and 40 percent.

Bounce rates from 25% to 30% are most likely as low as you’ll see them with everything working correctly. Anything under 40% that’s not the result of a broken GA installation is excellent, and indicative of a well built, professionally designed website that is meeting its users’ needs.

On the other hand, a bounce rate that low may also reflect a lack of dynamic (blogs, news, etc.) content on the website, which may or may not be beneficial.

The Good and the Good-ish

Of the websites I reviewed, sixteen fell between 30 to 40 percent, and another sixteen fell between 40 to 55 percent. I was actually surprised to see so many websites land under 40%—credit Bugti’s designers and developers. While the 30 to 40 percent range seems to be more common for exceptional bounce rates, I’d consider that range exceptional.

The average website’s bounce rate tends to fall within the 40 to 55 percent range. Once it tips over 50 percent, it’s probably time to identify which user segments or content are driving the bounce rate up.

Even a bounce rate over 60% might not be bad. It all depends on the website, which is why it is important to…

Set Your Own Baseline

Rather than worrying about keeping up with the Joneses and their fancy 29% bounce rate, set a baseline for your website, and work to improve it in relevant areas—i.e., something other than a blog or news section.

To set an appropriate baseline, consider the intent of the user and the purpose of the content. On a website that revolves around events, visitors often want the time, date, location, and that’s it. They get the information. They leave. The bounce rate may be higher on that site, but it’s okay because it’s still meeting the user’s needs.

However, for an online clothing store, where visitors typically browse, a lower bounce rate is preferred. An upward trend is particularly alarming for ecommerce because when users leave the site too quickly, that almost certainly translates to lost sales.

Mobile Bounce Rate

Take devices into consideration. Mobile users tend to bounce more frequently overall, so it’s reasonable to expect that websites with a significant and increasing portion of mobile traffic will experience a higher bounce rate. Tablets are not especially predictable—sometimes they bounce less than desktop, sometimes more.

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Generally mobile bounce rates to be approximately 10 to 20 percent higher than desktop. After analyzing mobile bounce rates across a small selection of websites from November 2013 to February 21st (at the time of writing), the average mobile bounce rate was just below 60%.e rate was just a shade under 60%. The rate for tablets was roughly 49%. Desktop visitors bounced only 42% of the time on average.

The Bad and the Ugly

A bounce rate below 20% or above 90% typically indicates a problem. A rate below 20% suggests issues with the analytics setup, while a rate above 90% suggests issues with the website itself. The only times I saw those ranges in this study were on sites with broken analytics implementations.

The Bad: Over 90 Percent

Everybody’s bouncing! Horrible, right? That’s spot on most of the time. There could be several reasons why people are leaving the site, such as poor design, browser compatibility issues, or faulty tracking codes. It might be time to consider moving away from outdated platforms like Geocities.

Alternatively, if it’s a single-page website lacking content, links, or event tracking, it’s probably time to start developing a more comprehensive website.

The Ugly: Under 20 Percent

Nobody’s bouncing! Great, right? Wrong. If it seems too good to be true, it probably is. It’s highly likely that the analytics implementation is malfunctioning.

Some possible causes:

Duplicate analytics code

Incorrectly implemented event tracking

Third party add-ons, e.g. a live chat

Under 20% is highly unlikely. 20 to 25 percent is certainly possible, but don’t hand out gold stars until digging around a little bit.

When over 75% of users don’t bounce, buggy analytics implementation is probably the culprit. This could also be because the website is built in a way that forces most users to take at least one action before leaving, e.g., a gateway or landing page they have to pass through before reaching the main website. Bounce rate is typically thought of as a quick way to measure user engagement (through meeting the user’s needs and usability), and gateways are often contrary to everything other than aggravating people.