What is a 'Navigation Bounce'?

A navigation bounce is similar to the original 'bounce', in that it monitors if a user exits a site quickly, but navigation bounces look at traditional 'bounces' at a more granular level. A navigation bounce tracks bounces within a site, i.e. on each individual page of the site. It looks at pageviews per user session, where a visitor may be navigating around a site and clicks to a new page, only to hit the 'back' button immediately.

For example, if a user was browsing a site on recipes, and they browsed through a pasta recipe, then clicked through to a soup recipe and then clicked on a cake recipe, then quickly clicked the back button to go back to the soup recipe or exits the page entirely, this would be marked as a 'navigation bounce'. So a navigation bounce differs from a traditional bounce in that it's within the pages of the site. The diagram below outlines this further:

Why Take Navigation Bounces into Consideration?

Arguably, navigation bounces as a UX metric are one of the most important ones to focus on. This is because it can offer insight into when a page is receiving a lot of navigation bounces - it's easy to click but ultimately undesired or coincidental. As a publisher, navigation bounces offer an understanding as to how your visitors are engaging with your site's content. 

Why not read our blog posts on how navigation bounces affect SEO and digital revenue and UX metrics that are changing how we view visitors?