Average Bounce Rate Calculator
How to Calculate Average Bounce Rate
Bounce Rate is one of the most misunderstood metrics in digital marketing and web analytics. Put simply, it represents the percentage of visitors who enter your site and then leave ("bounce") rather than continuing to view other pages within the same site.
Calculating the Average Bounce Rate for a website, or a group of pages, requires aggregating the total traffic data rather than simply averaging the percentages of individual pages.
The Bounce Rate Formula
The mathematical formula to calculate the average bounce rate across a specific time period or set of pages is:
Where:
- Total Sessions: The total number of visits that started on your website (Entrances).
- Total Bounces: The number of those sessions where the user visited only one page and triggered no other requests to the analytics server.
Why You Cannot Average Percentages
A common mistake is taking the bounce rate of Page A (e.g., 80%) and Page B (e.g., 20%) and saying the average is 50%. This is mathematically incorrect unless both pages have the exact same traffic volume.
For example:
- Page A: 1,000 Sessions, 800 Bounces (80% Rate)
- Page B: 100 Sessions, 20 Bounces (20% Rate)
Wrong Calculation: (80 + 20) / 2 = 50%.
Correct Calculation: Total Bounces (820) / Total Sessions (1,100) = 74.5%.
What is a "Good" Bounce Rate?
Bounce rates vary significantly by industry and the type of content. According to broad industry benchmarks (like those from Google Analytics data analysis), here is a general guide:
- 26% – 40%: Excellent. Indicates high engagement.
- 41% – 55%: Average. Typical for most content sites.
- 56% – 70%: Higher than average. Common for blogs and news sites.
- 70%+: High. Often indicates issues with page relevance, load speed, or user experience (unless it is a blog, news article, or landing page with a clear off-site Call to Action).
High Bounce Rate Causes
If your calculator result shows a high percentage, consider these factors:
- Slow Page Load Speed: Users leave if a site takes more than 3 seconds to load.
- Misleading Meta Titles: The content didn't match what the user expected from the search result.
- Poor Mobile Optimization: The site is difficult to navigate on a phone.
- Intrusive Ads/Popups: Immediate disruptions cause users to close the tab.