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Journal · The Clarity Series · Convert visitors

What is bounce rate?

By Nicholas Cabel The 60-second version lives on Instagram

A bounce is a visit where someone lands on one page and leaves without clicking anything else, like a ball hitting the page and bouncing straight back off. A high bounce rate means people are not sticking around.

In plain English

Picture someone opening a door, glancing around the room, and immediately backing out. They came in, but nothing made them want to stay or go further inside.

Lower it three ways

01

Load fast

A slow page loses people before they see anything worth staying for.

02

Match the page to what they searched

A mismatch between the click and the page reads as a wrong turn.

03

Point to one obvious next step

Give people a clear reason to click deeper into the site.

Worth remembering

Google found 53% of mobile visits are abandoned if a page takes over 3 seconds to load.

More than half your mobile visitors will bounce before the page even finishes loading if you cross that three-second mark.

What to do about it

A high bounce rate is usually a speed problem or a mismatch problem, and both are fixable. Get a free website audit and I will tell you which one is driving people away from your site.

About the author

  • Nicholas Cabel

    Written by

    Nicholas Cabel

    Founder of MakeAndUpdate, a one-person web studio in West Chester, PA. Hand-codes fast websites for local businesses and builds in public.

    @makeandupdate