We often hear about “bounce rate” when analyzing website traffic, but the term is often misleading or confusing. Is bounce rate good or bad? What should my bounce rate be? What does the term even mean?

Bounce rate, not to be confused with exit rate, refers to the percentage of single-page sessions or sessions in which a person leaves your site from the entrance page without interacting with that page. An instance may be someone who visits your site and leaves immediately because of a slow-loading homepage. Or that person may have found the information they needed and promptly left.

So how is bounce rate good (low) and bad (high)? It is “measured” in percentage with a higher bounce rate being bad and a lower bounce rate being better. One reason it could be high is that you might be acquiring the wrong kind of traffic to your site. Or you might be acquiring the right kind of traffic. Confused about the good and bad?

Think about it…if you’re giving your customers all the information they need on the homepage, what incentive is there for them to navigate the rest of the website? We juggle between giving too much information and not enough, but it’s important to keep our customers or clients engaged.

So how can we avoid a high bounce rate? A few simple steps are to keep your website load-time down, which means optimizing your images, fixing any broken links, avoiding pop-ups. Another way is to think wisely about your design – do you have too many banner ads? Is your copy in white over a dark background? Is your site mobile-friendly? These things can affect how long someone stays on your site before leaving.

To read more tips and tricks, and because I don’t want a high bounce rate for this post (!), click to read the article called “Reduce Bounce Rate :20 Things to Consider.”