Bounce Rate: What It Is and How to Fix It

Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who land on your website and leave without clicking anything or visiting another page. They showed up, looked around for a second, and bounced. A high bounce rate means something on your site is turning people away, and the job is finding out what.

01What's a "Normal" Bounce Rate?

It depends on the type of site, but for most small business websites, anything between 40 and 60% is average. Above 70%? That's a problem. Below 40%? You're doing great. You can check your bounce rate in Google Analytics if you've got it set up, and if you don't, that's step one.

02Why Do People Bounce?

Your site loads too slowly. Your design looks outdated or untrustworthy. Your content doesn't match what they were searching for. There's no clear next step: no call to action, no button, no direction. Or your site isn't mobile-friendly and they're on their phone. Any one of these can send someone running.

03How Do You Fix a High Bounce Rate?

Start with speed: compress your images and clean up your code. Make sure your site looks good on mobile since that's where most traffic comes from. Add clear calls to action on every page. Make your headlines specific and relevant. And make sure the page people land on delivers what they came for. If someone Googles "roof repair in Baytown" and lands on your generic homepage, they're going to bounce.

Bounce rate is not something you fix once. Check the analytics every month, find the pages losing people, and work down the list.