By Rafael Sotelo
Content manager at Marketing4eCommerce
LThe bounce rate is a metric that refers to the percentage of users who visit a website and leave it without having interacted with it. In this sense, the term “bounce” refers to the movement that we all know of in a ball. The user reaches the surface of the website but is not interested in it in any way, so he “bounces” outwards.
If you're just getting started in the world of web analytics, you've probably heard of bounce rate (also known as bounce percentage). But do you know exactly how bounce rate is measured and what factors influence it? In this article, we'll explain clearly what this type of metric is based on.
Example of a website's bounce rate
Bounce rate is the term used in analytics tools to refer to the percentage of visitors who leave a website… when they enter it. That is, those visitors who enter a website and leave the site immediately, without finland number data viewing any more content or browsing through any links. The percentage is very useful for measuring the level of user satisfaction.
Of course, the concept of bounce rate has changed over time, and its calculation varies depending on the type of tool we use. Thus, the bounce rate in GA4 will not be the same as in Universal Analytics and will differ from the one you get through other analytics tools. In this sense, Google Analytics 4 understands the bounce rate as “the percentage of sessions in which there have been no interactions” . But… how does it really measure it?
As Google clarifies, “a session is a period during which a user interacts with your website or application, while an engaged session is a session that lasts more than 10 seconds, has a conversion event, or has at least 2 views of a page or screen . ”
Imagine a user visits your website, stays for just 4 or 5 seconds, and then leaves your site, without having triggered any event (e.g., clicking on any links) or visiting any other page. As you can see, they haven't met any of Google's requirements to be considered an "interactive session," so that visit will be considered a bounce. If it were the only session on your site, your bounce rate would be 100%.