Bounce Rate Goal

Overview

The Bounce Rate goal tracks how many visitors included in your experiment left the page without interacting with it in any way.

Example: a visitor lands on the homepage, the experiment triggers, and leaves without doing anything else on the page - that counts as a bounce.

Note

No integration required. Bounce Rate works by default via the tracking code.

How it works (inverted logic)

Bounce Rate is an inverted goal. By default, every visitor is treated as a bounce the moment they arrive. Only if the visitor interacts with the page does an "un-bounce" event get sent, canceling out the original bounce.

Note

Because of this, a lower bounce rate shown in your dashboard is a good sign - it means more visitors engaged with your page.

Removing the goal

Bounce Rate is enabled by default. If you don't want to track it, go to Traffic Allocation & Goals in the experiment editor, press Select or create a goal, and uncheck the box next to Bounce Rate.

The Traffic Allocation and Goals section showing the Bounce Rate goalUnchecking the Bounce Rate goal to stop tracking it

Known issue - inflated Bounce Rate on Split URL Test variations

If you're running a Split URL Test, you may notice a higher Bounce Rate on the Variation specifically. This is expected behavior, not a bug.

Why it happens:

A Split URL Test variation typically works by redirecting the visitor:

window.location.href='https://www.example.com/pages/homepage-b';

Here's the sequence:

  1. The visitor lands on the page where the experiment runs.

  2. The experiment triggers and the visitor is bucketed into Control or Variation.

  3. The visitor and view count for that experiment increase.

  4. If bucketed into the Variation, the redirect code runs immediately.

  5. Because the visitor is redirected right away without further interaction on the original page, a bounce is registered.

Note

This isn't a sign of something broken - it's simply how bounce tracking interprets an immediate redirect. If Bounce Rate isn't meaningful for a Split URL Test, consider removing it from that experiment and relying on other goals instead.

Updated