Understanding user interaction with your website is crucial and Google Analytics 4 (GA4) introduces two key metrics to help you with this: Bounce Rate and Engagement Rate.
Each offers unique insights, such as Bounce Rate, a familiar term from previous versions of Google Analytics, which measures the percentage of single-page sessions where users leave without further interaction, and Engagement Rate, a newer, more nuanced metric in GA4. Engagement Rate reflects the percentage of sessions that last longer than 10 seconds, have a conversion event, or involve multiple page views. Unlike Bounce Rate, a high Engagement Rate indicates effective user interaction and content relevancy. Explore how Bounce Rate and Engagement Rate can enhance your approach to website analytics.
Bounce Rate
Bounce rate has been a marketing term for ages. However, the actual definition and meaning are often misunderstood by marketers.
Bounce Rate represents the percentage of visitors who visit a website, but only visit one page before leaving.
This can be misleading, as not all bounces are equal and the type of website and page should be considered. A standard Ecommerce website with a clearly defined checkout process is a perfect example where Bounce Rate can be extremely useful.
On sites where single pageview sessions are common, the usefulness of Bounce Rate becomes debatable. For example, a website providing food recipes will frequently find a user only viewing the specific recipe that interests them before leaving. If they get the information they need, then the session could be considered successful, yet the session is also considered a bounce.
Clearly, a nuanced approach to analysing Bounce Rate is needed, rather than simply trying to lower Bounce Rate at all costs.
Engagement Rate
With the introduction of GA4, Google has introduced an updated definition and a new metric – Engagement Rate. This can be thought of as a companion metric to Bounce Rate.
Engagement Rate, introduced with GA4, is defined as the percentage of sessions that are engaged sessions. An engaged session is a session that meets one of the following conditions:
- lasts 10 seconds or longer
- triggers one or more key events
- has two or more page views
In GA4, the Bounce Rate is now calculated as 100% minus the Engagement Rate (note this is a different definition to UA). The difference in definition between UA & GA4 can be seen in this table (taken from Google’s Analytics help article)
Which rate should be used?
In effect, the two rates are complementary in Google Analytics 4. If you know one rate, you can work out the other.
Which is best? I’d argue for using Engagement Rate, for a few reasons:
- To make it clear that there is a fundamental difference in how GA4 records these sessions compared to UA
- Engagement is a more intuitively understood concept than bounce.
- An increase in Engagement Rate signifies an improvement, aligning with how most metrics are interpreted.
