What Is Bounce Rate?

Written by Coursera Staff • Updated on

What is bounce rate, and why does it matter? Learn more about this critical metric for website performance.

[Featured image] A website owner checks their page's bounce rate on a laptop in an office setting.

Bounce rate refers to the number of people who leave a page without performing any action, like clicking a link, completing a purchase, or visiting a second page. In other words, they land on a page and then leave. Bounce rate is typically measured as a percentage. 

A good bounce rate is 40 percent or lower [1]. A lower percentage is preferable because it means that the content you’re creating on behalf of a brand or product resonates in some way with users. 

A bounce rate of 70 percent means that 70 percent of users navigated away from the page, while 30 percent stayed on the page and performed an action or moved to a second page. Similarly, a bounce rate of 48 percent shows that 48 percent of visitors navigated away, while 52 percent stayed on page. 

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How to calculate bounce rate?

Google Analytics provides a way to view the bounce rate for any specific page on your website [2]. Alternatively, you can calculate the bounce rate manually using the formula:

Bounce rate (%) = (Single-page visits ÷ Total visits) × 100.

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Average time: 1 month(s)

Learn at your own pace

Skills you'll build:

Financial Modeling, Corporate Finance, Microsoft Excel, Monte Carlo Method, Linear Programming (LP), Solver, Modeling, Linear Regression, Probabilistic Models, Regression Analysis, Discounted Cash Flow, Decision-Making, Cash Flow Analysis

Article sources

1

Semrush. “What is Bounce Rate and What Is a Good Bounce Rate?, https://www.semrush.com/blog/bounce-rate/.” Accessed February 1, 2025.

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