markymark - 10:40 pm on Aug 19, 2008 (gmt 0)

In and of itself, 'bounce rate' is a pretty meaningless metric. You need to look at what phrase or site has brought the visitor to a particular page in order to judge whether or not that page has failed to deliver what the user is looking for.

You also need to make a judgement on whether that page fulfilled it's requirement for particular visitors precisely ; causing them to find what they are looking for and then going away again.

The essential problem here is the words 'judgement' and 'judge' - basically 'bounce rate' tells you that people have left your site but everything else is just interpretation, guesswork and judgement.

Forget 'bounce rate' as a metric for all but the most keenly focussed lead gen/sales page type sites.