You Lost Them at “Hello!” – The Bounce Rate Explained

You don’t get long – maybe 5 seconds. You do it yourself: click on a website, glance around for a few moments, and then hit the back button or flit to a new tab faster than you can say, “Meh!” That’s a website bounce – if too many visitors to your site do it – then your “bounce rate” is high. A high bounce rate is more than just a missed opportunity – it’s a sign that something is seriously wrong.

What is a Bounce Rate?

Google has a bounce rate definition as:

In web analytics, a website visit is considered a bounce if a user views only a single page and leaves without interacting further, or if the session lasts less than 10 seconds without triggering a conversion event or at least 2 page views. 

But don’t forget, this is the longest measure of a bounce. Most bounces happen much faster than that. According to Shopify:

40% of shoppers will abandon a website if it takes longer than three seconds to fully load.

But What is a Good Bounce Rate?

Don’t Beat Yourself Up.

Bounce rates are punishing. You know yourself; you’re off within moments on most websites.

According to ChatGPT: a typical bounce rate is somewhere around 70-75%, a good bounce rate is around 60% and somewhere between 20% and 40% is excellent. You are going to leak visitors.

Why does Bounce Rate matter?

A high website bounce rate is damaging in more ways than one.

1. Lost conversions – Like the owner of a café, you’ve done the hard work, you’ve got punters through the door, yet somehow, they are leaving before they even take a seat. Every bounce is a potential customer or lead lost. Whether you’re selling products, offering services or generating leads, high bounce rates mean your website isn’t fulfilling its primary job – guiding users toward a goal.
2. Brand perception – Just as with people, first impressions matter online. If the waiter is picking his nose as you enter that café, you’ll be unlikely to go back – the café will be forever the “nose picking waiter place”. If your website isn’t mobile friendly (for example), visitors will leave at once and, most likely, never return. Your reputation is actually worse than if they had never visited.
3. Google takes notice – Google’s key proposition to its advertisers (who pay to keep the show on the road) is that, because they serve the best search results, billions of people will use the site and see the adverts. If users do not engage with a site listed in the search results, Google can often figure that out, and rank that site below those with a lower bounce rate.

Why do People Bounce?

Fundamentally, at it‘s heart, people leave a website because they feel it’s not for them. Again, like the café:

• You’re in a hurry (patience is wafer thin online) – you can’t see where to go or what to do. Where’s the serving guy? Go to Starbucks instead – you understand Starbucks.
• You just don’t like the décor – it’s unprofessional and the menu is full of spelling mistakes.
• Mismatched expectations – the sign/Google said café, this is a kebab shop.
• Intrusive pop-ups or ads – the owner ‘is in your face‘.

It doesn’t mean every website has to look the same – there are different cafés for different people. But instead of a few minutes, you have just a few seconds to convince your visitor that:

• yes, they are in the right place,
• yes this is their crowd,
• yes the team know what they are doing
• and yes the coffee will be great.

They need to know that this visit will reward them.

How Do I find My Site‘s Bounce Rate?

You need modern Google Analytics (GA4). If you don’t have it installed, sack your developers and call Little Fire.

For bounce rate, GA4 no longer shows a metric by default (as the older Universal Analytics did), but you can still find similar engagement metrics:

1. Go to your GA4 property.
2. Click on “Reports” in the left-hand menu.
3. Under “Engagement”, select “Pages and screens” or “Landing page”.
4. Here, you’ll see metrics like:
   • Engagement rate
   • Average engagement time
   • Conversions

In GA4, a web page bounce rate is now defined as 100% minus engagement rate. So, if your engagement rate is 70%, your bounce rate is effectively 30%.

How to Keep Visitors Saying ‘Hello’ Just That Bit Longer

First off, whatever you do, do it fast. Remember that grisly Shopify statistic.

Tailor your site‘s design to your visitors – you need a fully responsive website design. Mobile visitors don’t need to know your site looks great on a studio monitor (and vice versa), they just need to know you took the trouble to make it look great for them.

Tailor your site‘s content to your visitors:

• Make your offer clear – if you are running a bar called the “Beer Engine”, don’t open with your cider offering.
• Make good, relevant content available fast: site search, strong relevant calls to action and just, plain good-old fashioned words – pick what you know to be important for your customers and focus on providing it.

Don’t re-invent the wheel. Users are very used to using websites a certain way, so unless you have a very good reason for doing otherwise, use best-in-class User Interface (UI) patterns to keep your visitors’ User Experience (UX) pleasing.

Test and Improve

Any one of these changes will make a difference your visitor engagement. To test how much, keep an eye on your Google Analytics (or similar).

If you can, install something like Microsoft Clarity so you can see how visitors are behaving when using your site, how far they scroll, the widgets they engage with etc. Sometimes, something as simple as changing the colour of a button can transform a site’s success. Little Fire can help with this.

These tools will help you refine the changes you make and help turn your website into a lean, mean conversion machine.

And, the internet is changing fast … the cool kids are drinking lavender crème frappuccinos now (apparently). Nothing online is a fit-it-and-forget-it solution – review your site regularly – or ask us to.

Final Thoughts

Remember, a bounce isn’t just someone leaving –

• it’s someone who didn’t find what they needed,
• it’s a lead lost with little hope of return,
• it’s a drag on your search engine ranking
• and business missed.

Reducing your bounce rate isn’t just about improving metrics; it’s about creating a better experience for your audience and proving to Google that your site deserves to be found.