25% bounce rate on single-page application

Question

I have a single-page website (just launched on a small-scale) and I was thinking the bounce rate would be 100% since there's no other page on the site to visit. Instead I'm seeing bounce rate of 25% on Google Analytics.

How is the bounce rate calculated?

Answer 1

Bounce rate can be a bit confusing if you don't understand exactly what it is. Here's how the Google Analytics Help Center defines it:

Bounce Rate is the percentage of single-page sessions (ie sessions in which the person left your site from the entrance page without interacting with the page).

In other words, if you send any other data to GA during that sessions, it's not a bounce. (The one exception to this is when you send a hit as non-interactive via the nonInteraction parameter).

From you screenshot above, it says you have 5.58 pages per session, which means you must be sending some additional pageview hits, so that explains why your bounce rate isn't 100%.