Have you ever clicked through from Google’s search results and been like, ‘that’s not what I wanted?’ and hit the back button on your browser to try again? That’s the fundamental concept of bounce. A single page is loaded, and then the visitor leaves the site.

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.

Silktide Analytics has improved upon this measurement by adding a time component. If a visitor stays on the page for more than 10 seconds, we don’t count it as a bounce. Within the 10-second initial visit window, if the visitor interacts with an element on the page, like closing your cookie banner, that visit will no longer count as bounce when they leave the page, even if they did not make it to the full 10 seconds.

This is a different approach than most analytics platforms use, so you may find that our bounce rate measurements don’t match what you see elsewhere.