About the metrics
Engagement rate and bounce rate are important metrics in Google Analytics that enable you to measure and analyze user engagement with your website or app.
Both metrics are defined in terms of engaged sessions.
- A session is a period during which a user is engaged with your website or app.
- An engaged session is a session that lasts longer than 10 seconds, has a key events, or has at least 2 pageviews or screenviews.
The engagement rate is the percentage of engaged sessions on your website or mobile app. The bounce rate is the opposite of the engagement rate. The bounce rate is the percentage of sessions that were not engaged.
In other words, engagement rate helps you measure the percentage of visits to your website or app that involved some form of meaningful engagement.
An example
For instance, a user visits your website, reads some content for less than 10 seconds, and then leaves. While they were on your website, they didn't trigger any events or visit any other pages.
In this instance, because the user didn't match any of the criteria of an engaged session (the session was less than 10 seconds, no key event occurred, and there were not at least 2 pageviews or screenviews), the session would not count as an engaged session. If this were the only session on your website, the engagement rate would be 0% and the bounce rate would be 100%.
Add the metrics to your reports
By default, most reports in Google Analytics do not include the engagement rate and bounce rate metrics. To view these metrics in your reports, you need to customize the report. You can customize a report if you are an Editor or Administrator. You can only add metrics to detail reports.
- Sign in to Google Analytics.
- From the left menu, select Reports
.
- Go to the report you want to customize, such as the Pages and screens report.
- Click Customize report [
] in the upper-right corner the report.
Important: If you don't see the button, you don't have Editor or Administrator role. -
In Report data, click Metrics.If you only see Add Cards and don't see Metrics, you are in an overview report. You can only add metrics to a detail report.
- Click Add metric (near the bottom of the right menu).
- Type "Engagement rate". If the metric doesn't appear, it's already included in the report.
- Type "Bounce rate". If the metric doesn't appear, it's already included in the report.
- Click Apply.
- Save the changes to the current report.
The engagement rate and bounce rate metrics will be added as the last two columns in the table. If you have many metrics in the table, you may need to scroll to the right to view the metrics.
Migrate from Universal Analytics
If you're migrating from Universal Analytics and want to understand how the calculation for bounce rate is different in Google Analytics 4, see [UA→GA4] Comparing metrics: Google Analytics 4 vs Universal Analytics.
Increase your engagement rate
If your engagement rate is low, then consider using reports and explorations in Analytics to dig deeper to see whether it's uniformly low or whether it's the result of certain channels, source/medium pairs, pages or screens, or something else.
For example, if a few pages or screens have a low engagement rate, see whether the content correlates well with the marketing you use to drive users to those pages or screens, and whether those pages or screens offer users easy paths to the next steps you want them to take.
If a certain channel has a low engagement rate, review your marketing efforts for that channel. For example, if users who come from display are bouncing, make sure your ads are relevant to your site content.
If the problem is more widespread, take a look at your measurement code to be sure that all the necessary pages are tagged and that they are tagged correctly. If you're collecting data from an app, make sure you've set up the Google Analytics for Firebase SDK correctly.