What is bounce rate?

Bounce rate is a metric that measures how many people leave your site after viewing only one page. It’s calculated by dividing the number of bounces (sessions where someone viewed only one page and didn’t do anything else) by the total number of sessions and multiplying by 100%.

It’s important to note that if a visitor completes a goal or makes a purchase (an ecommerce conversion), it doesn’t count as a bounce even if they only viewed one page. This is because they took an action that was valuable to you as the site owner.

Bounce rate = (Bounces / Sessions) * 100%

Bounces: The number of sessions during which visitors viewed an entry page but didn’t continue to another page view, goal conversion or ecommerce conversion. If a visitor performs a download, search or other custom event and leaves the entry page, the session is counted as a bounce.

For example, if you have a blog post that receives 100 sessions in a day, but 50 of those sessions result in a bounce, your bounce rate would be 50%. This could indicate that visitors aren’t finding what they’re looking for on your site or that your site isn’t engaging enough to keep them on the page.

In Piwik PRO, we also use a metric called a page bounce rate. This is an accurate metric for counting the bounce rate for a page URL or page title. This is calculated by dividing the number of bounces on that page by the number of entries (the number of times people started a session on that specific page) and multiplying by 100%. This can help you identify which pages on your website are causing visitors to leave without taking further action.

Page bounce rate = (Bounces / Entries) * 100%

Bounces: The number of sessions during which visitors viewed an entry page but didn’t continue to another page view, goal conversion or ecommerce conversion. If a visitor performs a download, search or other custom event and leaves the entry page, the session is counted as a bounce.

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