Bounce Rate
Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who leave your site after viewing only one page and taking no action. A high bounce rate means people arrive, see one page, and go. It tells you nothing about who those people were or whether they were ready to buy.
How it works in practice
Your analytics tool counts a session as a bounce when a visitor loads one page and leaves without a second view. The rate is bounces divided by total sessions. It is a traffic metric, not a contact metric, so it ends at a number and never a name. You learn that people left, but not which people, or whether the one who left was a buyer.
What it is commonly confused with
It is commonly confused with a sign that your traffic is bad, when it often means the opposite. A visitor who read your pricing page for four minutes and left is a high-intent prospect, not a bounce to fix. The bounce hides the buyer, which is why identification matters more than the rate. A low bounce rate with no names is still a list of strangers.
Why it matters to a business owner
Bounce rate tells you people are leaving. It does not tell you who left. A business that only watches bounce rate is counting exits while the buyers walk out the door unnamed, which is the exact problem visitor identification solves. Once you can name the bouncers, the bounce rate stops being a vanity metric and starts being a list of people to call.