What Is Bounce Rate? Definition, Formula, Benchmarks
Bounce rate explained: the formula, why content sites run high, SPA measurement artifacts, and the engagement metrics replacing it.
Bounce rate is the percentage of sessions that viewed exactly one page and left. Formula: single-page sessions ÷ total sessions × 100. A session that arrives, reads for five minutes, and leaves satisfied counts identically to one that misclicked and fled in a second — which is the metric's core weakness.
Typical ranges
| Site type | Typical bounce rate |
|---|---|
| Blogs / content sites | 65–90% |
| Landing pages | 60–85% |
| E-commerce | 30–55% |
| SaaS dashboards | 20–40% |
High content-site bounce rates are mostly search working as intended: a visitor wanted one answer, got it, left. They are not a quality verdict.
Two measurement traps
- SPAs without route tracking report ~100% bounce because client-side navigation never registers — a tooling artifact, fixed by History API instrumentation.
- Cross-page-type comparisons: judging a glossary page and a checkout page on one number is a category error.
What to use instead
Per-page engagement signals: active time, scroll depth, meaningful clicks, and next-step rate where a next step exists. The full argument — including when bounce rate still has a use — is in Bounce Rate Is a Bad Metric.