Bounce rate measures the percentage of visitors who land on a page and leave without clicking, scrolling meaningfully, or visiting another page. A high bounce rate can signal a mismatch between what a visitor expected and what the page delivers, and it's a key metric agencies monitor when running conversion rate optimization (CRO).
Example
A paid campaign sends visitors to a generic homepage and 80% leave without a second click. The same ad pointed to a dedicated landing page keeps far more of them.
Related resources
Glossary
Conversion Rate Optimization
CRO is the process of improving a website to turn more visitors into leads, customers, or sales.
CRO (conversion rate optimization) is the process of improving your website so more of your existing visitors take action — buy, book a call, submit a form — without spending more on traffic. Most businesses focus entirely on getting more visitors and ignore what happens once people arrive. CRO fixes that gap. A 1-2% conversion rate improvement often outperforms a traffic increase, because it compounds on every visitor you're already paying to attract.
Average website conversion rates fall between 2% and 5%, though this varies significantly by industry — e-commerce tends to run lower, B2B lead-gen sites often run higher. Benchmark against your own historical data more than industry averages, since traffic quality and offer type vary a lot. The more useful question is: what's your current rate, and what would a 1-point improvement be worth in revenue? That reframes CRO as a growth lever, not a vanity metric.
