Ever wondered what bounce rates are in your web stats reports?

Bounce rate essentially represents the percentage of initial visitors to a site who "bounce" away to a different site, rather than continue on to other pages within the same site.

The formula used to calculate bounce rate is: Bounce Rate = Total Number of Visits Viewing One Page / Total Number of Visits.

A bounce occurs when a web site visitor only views a single page on a website, that is, the visitor leaves a site without visiting any other pages before a specified session-timeout occurs.

If the bounce rate on your home page exceeds 50%, then you probably need to find out why. Are you attracting the right visitors?  If half the people who come to your home page leave right away, are there major flaws in your search strategy or advertising or is your home or landing page not doing its job?