Exit Rate measures how many people left your website from a certain page. It would seem like it would show you where people are exiting from your site so you can fix problems with specific pages. The problem is that everyone who comes to your website has to leave at some point. What if they came, bought something and then left? That’s what you want them to do. Or what if you blog daily and people come to read your latest post and then leave. While you may prefer they spend time on other pages, if they’re loyal readers, they’ve been keeping up with your posts. So is Exit Rate useful? Yes and no. Let’s look at it in more detail…
Defining Exit Rate
Exit Rate shows you what percentage of people who were on a particular page exited the site from that page. It doesn’t show you how many pages they looked at before they got to that page. They could have entered the site from anywhere. They may have even accomplished what they set out to do. You don’t know. You only know they exited your site from this particular page.
When Exit Rate is Useful
If you have a site where people have to go to more than one page to complete a task — say on an eCommerce site — Exit Rate can be very helpful for understanding where people are getting lost in the process. Knowing where people get lost in the conversion process can help you fix those pages to increase conversion and decrease the exit rate on those pages. Exit rate in this context is often called abandonment rate — or how often someone started the purchase process and then left.
When Exit Rate Isn’t Useful
When you’re looking at the exit rates for specific pages (other than those involved in a conversion or sale), exit rate just tells you what percentage of people left the site from that page — meaning that was the last page they looked at. Those people could have entered the site from anywhere, looked at a bunch of pages and just decided to leave from this particular page.
Outside of the conversion/eCommerce example, what if someone came to your site looking for specific information, found it on that page and then left. They found what they were looking for, which is what you want. Again, you may be able to entice them to stay longer by providing links to additional pages on your site, but your goal of satisfying their need was completed. What can you do with the exit rate? Not really anything. It doesn’t give you enough information to know what to improve.
An Alternative Metric — Bounce Rate
An alternative metric that’s more useful for the purpose of improving specific pages is Bounce Rate — or how many people who enter your site on that page never click anywhere else and leave without looking at any other pages. Unless they happened to find exactly what they’re were looking for on the first page (you have really good SEO), a high bounce rate is an indicator of a problem on a specific page.
Use Bounce Rate to Improve Conversions
Even in the case of good SEO, you probably want people to go to more than one page on your site. You want them to convert, which usually means more than one page. Take a look at your top content report and top entry pages in your analytics package and look at the bounce rate for each page. Focus on improving the pages with high bounce rates to increase conversions.
Thoughts? How do you use exit rate and bounce rate?
(photo by Cellular Immunity)