Lessons to take away from your bounce rate
Posted by: Zak Stawski
on Aug 02, 2010 
In adolescence, a bounce rate might’ve referred to how much air time you could get on a trampoline. In website design, however, a bounce rate refers to the percentage of initial visitors who leave your page rather than exploring other pages on it. The formula is simple: bounce rate = total number of visits viewing only one page/total number of visits.
Ideally, you want a low bounce rate on all the pages of your website. Many websites, however, show the common trend of lower bounce rates on the homepage than on product pages. As homepages are broad and product pages are specific, this isn’t much of a surprise. New visitors, after all, have to find their way to product pages by scanning the homepage first. Thus, if you think your bounce rate on a product page is too high, compare it with the bounce rate of another product page rather than your homepage.
A common thought in the industry is that a lower bounce rate means a higher number of conversions. While this is true, it doesn’t necessitate the truth of the opposite. Since bounce rate measures how many people leave a page—but not conversions—a higher bounce rate can still mean just as many conversions. Because organic and/or paid search engine marketing can direct a large amount of traffic to your site, you can still retain a large number of conversions--even if a moderate number of visitors take off after reaching your homepage.
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