Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who arrive on a website and leave without taking any further action, such as clicking to another page, filling in a form or making a purchase.
A high bounce rate is a symptom worth investigating. It can mean the page is slow, the content does not match what the visitor expected, or there is no obvious next step, all of which lose enquiries.
It must be read in context. A bounce is not always bad: someone who lands on a contact page, gets the phone number and calls has technically bounced but actually converted. The number only means something alongside the page's job.
For a small business, bounce rate by traffic source is the useful view. A channel that sends visitors who bounce instantly is sending the wrong people, or the landing page is wrong for them.
A cafe runs ads to its homepage and sees a 85 percent bounce rate from that campaign. Visitors arrive, see a slow page that does not show the menu or booking link, and leave.
The cafe points the ad at a fast page with the menu, hours and a booking button right there. The bounce rate from the campaign drops and bookings rise.
The number itself did not fix anything. It pointed to a broken experience, and fixing the experience is what changed the result.
In-House watches bounce rate by source through the analytics integration and the web agent, treating a spike as a signal to investigate the page or the channel feeding it.