Bounce Rate in Google Analytics 4

If you're using Google Analytics 4 (GA4), you might have noticed that bounce rate is missing from the standard reports. And you’re probably also wondering – how can you understand if people leave or stick around on your landing pages? Good news. You’re in the right place!

What is Bounce Rate?

Traditionally, ‘Bounce Rate’ has been the percentage of sessions that contain a single page view on your website. For example, if two people visit your website and view a single page each and two people view two pages each, you would have a rate of 50%. Half of these sessions contained a single page view.

Bounce rate is calculated by dividing the number of bounces by the number of sessions. A ‘bounce’ occurs when someone lands on your website and leaves without navigating to another page (and without interacting). And by default, bounces and bounce rate does not consider how much time was spent on a page.

Here we can see a custom report from the previous version of Google Analytics (Universal Analytics) which shows the number of bounces, the number of sessions, and the bounce rate for each landing page:

If we divide the number of bounces by the number of sessions in the first row, we can calculate the metric manually. Universal Analytics also added one more layer of complexity. If you tracked actions within a page, like people clicking to download a file, you could control if these actions were (or weren’t) used to calculate bounce rate.

How is bounce rate calculated in Google Analytics 4?

The bounce rate you see in Google Analytics 4 will still include sessions that contain a single page view, but it will also look at additional factors. These factors include how long people spend on the page and if they convert.

In Google Analytics 4, it is the percentage of sessions that were not considered engaged. This means that if someone viewed a single page and spent less that 10 seconds on that page or they didn’t convert, then the session would be considered a bounce.

Basically any sessions that are not ‘Engaged Sessions’ will be used to calculate the metric. So what is an engaged session? If any of the following conditions are met, then a session would be considered engaged:

So if you had a total of ten sessions and seven of those session were ‘Engaged Sessions’ then the bounce rate in Google Analytics 4 would be 30%.

Here’s the calculation to see how this works:

3 non-engaged sessions / 10 sessions = 30% bounce rate

Great, so we know how bounce rate is calculated in GA4, but I’m not seeing it in my reports.

Where is bounce rate in Google Analytics 4?

You’re probably wondering where to find bounce rate in Google Analytics 4. The good news is that it is available in the latest version of Google Analytics. However, you will need to customize your reports or create an exploration report to view bounce rate.

Here’s our tutorial that walks you through the steps to add bounce rate to your reports in GA4:

Should you use bounce rate or engagement rate?

While bounce rate is a useful metric in Google Analytics, it has some disadvantages. In simple terms, bounce rate measures the number of people who viewed a page and left without engaging.

Since bounce rate is the opposite (or inverse) of engagement rate, it can be useful to shift our thinking and focus on what’s working instead of what’s not working on our website. That being said, you will probably find using a combination of engagement rate and bounce rate useful depending on the analysis you’re preforming in Google Analytics.

Key Considerations When Interpreting Bounce Rate Data

1. Engagement and Bounce Rates: Both engagement and bounce rates are standard metrics you can regularly review to discover potential website problems, make better design and marketing decisions, and optimize the user experience.
2. Specific Scenarios for Bounce Rate Analysis: Use your best judgment to determine when to focus on bounce rate. For instance, if a landing page has a high exit rate, check if it also has a high bounce rate. This combination can signal that visitors are not finding what they expect or are not compelled to take further action.
3. Understanding Exit Rates: Remember that bounce rate and exit rate are not the same metrics. An exit is the last page people view before leaving your site. Being an exit page isn't always bad. It is problematic, however, when the page in question is a landing page, and users come and go without clicking on a call to action (CTA), moving on to the next page, or engaging with your content.

Actionable Insights

By examining bounce rates, you can gain a more comprehensive view of user behavior on your site. High bounce rates on critical pages, like landing pages, can highlight areas needing improvement, such as clearer CTAs, better content, or more engaging design.

While bounce rate offers valuable insights, balancing it with engagement rate and understanding the context of exit rates can provide a fuller picture of your website's performance and areas for optimization.

To gain a more comprehensive understanding of user interaction, consider using additional metrics, including:

• Page views: These metrics offer insights into how many pages or screens a user visits, providing a broader view of engagement.
• Engagement rate: This measures how actively users interact with your content beyond just viewing it.
• Key event rate: Understanding how many visitors complete desired actions can offer more actionable insights.
• Average engagement time: This metric indicates how long users stay engaged with your content, offering a deeper look into user interest.

How can you reduce bounce rate?

Reducing bounce rate is all about keeping your audience engaged and satisfied with what they find on your page. Here’s how you can achieve that by creating original, high-quality content:

1. Understand Your Audience:

   • Conduct thorough research to know your audience's preferences, pain points, and interests.

   • Tailor your content to address their specific needs and questions.
2. Craft Unique and Engaging Headlines:

   • Use compelling headlines to grab attention immediately.

   • Ensure your headlines accurately reflect the content to avoid misleading your readers.
3. Deliver Valuable Content:

   • Write on trending topics but offer a unique perspective.

   • Provide actionable insights, tips, and solutions your audience can't find elsewhere.
4. Consider Design and Visuals:

   • Include images, infographics, and videos to make your content more engaging.

   • Ensure visuals are high-quality and relevant to the content.
5. Encourage User Interaction:

   • Add questions and call-to-actions within the content to prompt reader engagement.

   • Use comment sections, polls, and social media shares to create a community feel.
6. Ensure Mobile Friendliness:

   • Optimize your content layout for all devices, particularly smartphones and tablets.

   • Use responsive design to ensure a seamless reading experience on mobile.

By understanding your audience and producing content that genuinely aligns with their needs and interests, you'll attract visitors and encourage them to stay longer and explore more of what you offer. This, in turn, reduces the bounce rate and boosts site performance.

What are the alternatives to bounce rate?

Engagement Rate

The best alternative to bounce rate in Google Analytics 4 is ‘Engagement Rate’. This metric is calculated by dividing the number of engaged sessions by the total number of sessions.

Switching to engagement rate has two key advantages. It focuses on the positive, so we aim to improve engagement. This is a great mind-shift compared to bounce rate, which is a ‘negative’ metric.

Engagement rate also provides a more accurate reflection of people interested in your content and offers. For a session to be considered ‘engaged’ and be included in the engagement rate calculation, at least one of the following criteria needs to be met:

• The session lasts longer than ten seconds
• The session includes two or more page views
• The session includes at least one conversion

You find engagement rate in a couple of the default reports. This includes the ‘Demographic Details’ report (found under ‘Reports’ and then ‘Demographics’).

You will also find it in the ‘Google Organic Search Traffic’ report if you’ve linked Google Search Console. Strangely, it’s not included in the default ‘Landing Pages’ report or the ‘Engagement Overview’ report, but you can edit these reports to include the metric if you have edit or admin-level permission.

You will generally want to aim for a higher engagement rate for your content. Start by reviewing the engagement rate for your most important pages and look for lower and higher than expected rates. You can also compare pages with the lowest rates to those with the highest rate to see if you can establish what is potentially causing the lower levels of engagement with your content.

Views per user

The ‘Views Per User’ metric can be useful for understanding the average number of times people engage with each page on your website. For example, if one person viewed your home page, then your contact page, and then returned to your home page, you would have two views for the home page. If someone else viewed your home page and then left without viewing another page, this would count one page view for the home page. This means we would have three views of the home page (two from the first person and one from the second) and two users. We could then calculate the ‘Views Per User’ for the home page like this:

3 views / 2 users = 1.5 views per user

This metric can be used a bit like bounce rate since it tells us if people view the page more (or less) times on average. However, it’s important to consider the objective for each page. For example, if you expect people to get everything they need on a single page, like a blog post or store locator page, you would likely see a lower average number of views per user.

More Alternatives to Bounce Rate

Other metrics that will come in handy include average engagement time, conversions, entrances, exits, and unique user scrolls. These can also be used to add additional context when using the engagement rate metric in your reports.

Try combining these metrics with ‘Page Location’, ‘Page Title’, ‘Landing Page’ and other dimensions that report the pages people view on your website:

• Entrances tell you where people land on your website as they start their session.
• Exits report the number of times people viewed a page before the session ended.
• Conversions report the number of people who’ve triggered a conversion action on each page.
• Average Engagement Time tells you the average amount of time people spend on each page. Average engagement time can be particularly useful if you expect people to get everything they need on a single landing page.
• Unique User Scrolls tell you the number of people who’ve scrolled through 90% of a page.

What is the difference between bounce rate and exit rate?

Currently, the entrance and exit metrics are only available when creating exploration reports in Google Analytics 4 (GA4). Hopefully, these metrics will be made available when customizing the standard reports in the future.

Bounce rate and exit rate both measure when visitors leave your site, but they do so in different contexts. Understanding these metrics is important for identifying user engagement and areas for improvement on your website.

Bounce Rate measures the percentage of visitors who leave your site after viewing only one page. This metric indicates non-engaged sessions. For instance, if someone visits your site, lands on the homepage, and leaves without clicking on anything else, that session is a ‘bounce’. High bounce rates can signify that users aren't finding what they're looking for immediately.

Exit Rate, on the other hand, tracks where visitors leave your site after engaging with multiple pages. This metric applies to engaged sessions that end on a particular page. For example, if a user navigates from the homepage to a category page and finally to a product page before leaving the site, the exit rate is associated with the product page. This can show which pages might be causing users to leave after some interaction.

To summarize:

• Bounce Rate: Single-page sessions with no further interaction.
• Exit Rate: The percentage of visitors who leave after multiple interactions on the site, ending their session on a specific page.

By monitoring both metrics, you can better understand user behavior and optimize your site accordingly.

Which is better, bounce rate or engagement rate?

Bounce rate and engagement rate are useful metrics for understanding how engaged people are with your content. As we’ve seen, engagement rate has some advantages over bounce rate. However, you can customize your reports in Google Analytics 4 to report on bounce rate (aka ‘non-engagement rate’), just remember that bounce rate in Google Analytics 4 is different to the bounce rate you might have used in Universal Analytics and other tools.