Struggling with people exiting your website just after a few clicks? Trying to improve the bounce rate might be a step in the wrong direction. The exit rate is what you should be concerned about.
Managing a website is a complex task. Google has tried to simplify things by providing Google Analytics, their analytical tool for measuring website performance. However, it has some complex and confusing metrics whose effect on the website is hardly understood by the usual person.
This comprehensive guide will talk about exit rates, bounce rates, the difference between exit rate and bounce rate, and all the ways you can make them tilt in your favour.
Table of Contents
What is Exit Rate?
Exit rate is the percentage of people who leave your website after viewing a certain page, having browsed other pages or making other interactions. It is the percentage of your total visitors who leave your website after engaging for some time.
Exit rates can convey different things according to the context. For example, if your e-commerce store’s shopping cart has too high of an exit rate, it might signal that the visitors aren’t getting enough of a push to complete the purchase, or there is a problem with the layout or checkout screen.
On the other hand, if your blog post has a good ‘average time spent on the page’ and a high exit rate, it might mean that the visitor got the information they were looking for, and then exited. In these cases, a high exit rate is a good thing for your website. Thus, it is very essential to monitor exit points to figure out what user experience you can deliver.
It is important to know that exiting is a scenario only considered on the last page of a user’s session on the website. If a user is leaving on the very first page on which they arrive at your website, it is known as bouncing.
What is Bounce Rate?
Bounce rate is the percentage of people who leave your website immediately after landing on it, right from the page they landed on. Bouncing means that the visitors did not want to interact with your website any further. If a user lands on any page of your website and leaves without making more clicks or scrolling to any other page, they are said to have bounced.
While high exit rates can be a positive metric, high bounce rates are always a negative metric signifying that users do not want to interact with your website. High bounce rates might mean that your website might have slow loading times, irrelevant content, a spammy layout and ads, a bad user experience, etc.
It might also mean that your links are tapping into an audience that is irrelevant to you and for whom your website is irrelevant. Bounce has to be controlled to generate more engagement and traffic.
The Difference Between Exit Rate and Bounce Rate
Although both bounce rate and exit rate involve users exiting your website, the similarities end there. There are a lot of functional and practical differences between the two, and different steps need to be taken to improve these metrics in your favour.
Bounce Rate vs Exit Rate
- Bounce rate is concerned with users leaving right from where they arrived on your website without any further interaction. Exit rate, on the other hand, measures people leaving after engaging, scrolling multiple pages, etc.
- The bounce rate signifies negative performance, as the users quickly left without any interaction. On the other hand, exit rates can signify positive impacts such as the completion of a user’s search journey or purchase.
- Exit rate measures the quality of the entire session, as in the pages visited, interactions made, etc. before arriving on the final page from which the user exited. On the other hand, the bounce rate is very page-centric and depicts the quality of the page from which the user bounced off.
As we can see, the exit rate is to be focused on if the entire user journey has to be examined and changes have to be made accordingly. If, on the other hand, the quality of a single page, such as a landing or commercial page, is to be discerned, then the bounce rate is more important to focus on.
How to Calculate Exit Rate in Digital Marketing?
To calculate exit rate in digital marketing you need two elements. Total visits to that page and total exits. Hence, exit rate = (Total exits from a page in a specific duration)*100/(Total visits to a page in a specific duration). For an instance if total exits are 200 in 30 days, and total visits are 500 in 30 days. In this case exit rate will be:
Exit Rate= 200*100/500=40%
Factors that Affect Exit Rate
Multiple factors can lead a user to drop off a page after having spent time on the website. As already mentioned, sometimes the user’s search query has been satisfied, which is a good exit rate. Google Analytics also shows you the data of whether you were the last click for a search term, meaning you can know if the user went to another website for the same query after visiting your website. This signifies the poor performance of your website and a negative exit.
Here are some factors that may be leading users to negatively exit your website without being satisfied:
- Relevance of Content – If the page has irrelevant information, fluff content, or content that does not meet the intent of the search query, then users are likely to go to more relevant sources without their intent being satisfied. Similarly, if a piece of topical information is outdated, users seek the latest pages with the updated information. This again increases your exit rate.
- User Experience – User experience refers to a combination of ease of navigation, appearance and layout, placement of ads, popups, etc. If your website has a complex layout and searching for information is not easy, then users are likely to drop off. Similarly, excessive ads and popups interrupt the experience and lead users to get frustrated and drop off.
- Page Loading Speed – It is one of the biggest reasons for a high exit rate. If the user has to wait for a considerably long time in an era where most webpages are instant, then they will drop off and search for faster sources, even if you have more relevant information. This is why technical SEO and mobile optimisation are important, as failing these checks prevents readers and users from even seeing your website.
- Traffic Source – If you have a lot of backlinks without any certain strategy, and you are running ads for the wrong search terms in the wrong demographic, then a lot of irrelevant traffic is arriving on your website. Obviously, if a user doesn’t want the information that you are providing, then they are not going to stick around to engage with it.
How to Investigate the Cause of High Exit Rates
Simply guessing which of the factors is causing high exit rates will not suffice, and website owners have to take a proactive approach to figure out why users are dropping off.
Fortunately, a lot of tools and automation technologies are available that help website owners figure out the reason for certain kinds of user behaviours on their websites.
The following methods can help website owners figure out why their web pages have a high exit rate:
- Content Review – Content irrelevance may be playing a bigger role than you had initially thought of. When users search for a keyword, they have an intent in mind, and the search results should lead to the satisfaction of the intent. If the content is irrelevant, low-quality, or too difficult to interpret, they will exit and look for better sources.
A comprehensive content review should be done, and competitors offering the same information/product/service should be analysed. Based on this research, content should be optimised to be of the highest quality, up-to-date, and easy to consume.
- Journey Analysis – The pages a user has visited on your website before arriving at the page they exited from, and the interactions they have done before making their exit; Both of these serve as indicators of their intent. An analysis of these two factors can help better your understanding of why a user is dropping off from the final page.
It might be so that your pages are poorly interlinked together and confuse the visitor over whether you can satisfy their intent or not.
- Using Heatmaps – Heatmaps are visual representations of what users do on any web page. They depict hot zones (areas on your page where most interactions, clicks, etc. are done), and also depict how far users have scrolled on that page.
Heatmaps are great tools for analysing what button and banner placements are doing to user behaviour. If the user is misinterpreting clickable assets, engaging with areas that are not the focus, etc. then the page needs optimisation. Heatmaps provide this data to enable you to better understand user behaviour and intent.
- Session Recordings – Session recordings are screen recordings of users visiting your page, showing how their cursor is moving and what interactions the user is making. They also depict the same information as a heatmap, the only difference being that heatmaps are a cumulative representation depicting density, whereas session recordings are on an individual basis.
Many tools such as Hotjar, Crazy Egg, etc. exist that allow you to use heatmaps and session recordings to investigate user behaviour on your website.
- User Experience Surveys – The simplest way of knowing any piece of information is to ask for it directly. User experience surveys are questionnaires or popups asking visitors on your website how their experience has been, and then asking for suggestions on how you can improve their experience.
- Technical SEO Check – A comprehensive technical review of page loading speeds, mobile compatibility, etc. can help you improve these factors that are instant exit triggers for visitors.
How to Reduce Exit Rates and Have Better Retention?
Once you have figured out what exactly is causing the exit from your web pages, you can take measures to improve the user experience and increase retention on your website. For website owners, this is crucial, as it directly impacts revenue from the website and its sustainability.
Here are some measures you can take to reduce exit rates:
- Content Optimisation: A lot of research should go into the content you create, and it should depict expertise in the domain. Similarly, the content should be structured into easy-to-read small paragraphs, with a table of contents to make navigation easy.
Older posts should be kept up-to-date with the latest information and should be revamped every few months. For commercial pages, the CTA copy should be very persuasive and crisp, with no fluff. Only the highest quality easiest to consume content is worthy enough enough for visitors to stay on your page.
- Technical Optimisation: Google Page Speed Insights is a great tool for checking page load speeds. They should be kept as fast as possible. Similarly, your web page should be optimised for optimal viewing experience across various devices.
The usage of CDNs (Content Delivery Networks) and browser caching can help immensely in improving page speed.
- Improving User Experience (UX): In trying to make a website look good, owners often overlook functionality. Your website should have a clear and simple layout with no clutter. Ease of navigation should be prioritised with different blocks, sections, and headers leading to different clusters (blogs, product pages, resources, etc.). An intuitive website is user-friendly and approachable.
The addition of more interactive and engaging content such as videos, polls, questions, etc. can also help you keep the visitor on screen. These can also serve as CTAs for you, opening up more opportunities.
- Streamlining Strategy: Your ads and backlinks should only bring in traffic that wants to engage with what you are supplying. If your strategy is all over the place, your exit rates are bound to be high.
Research your keyword clusters, use long-tail keywords, and advertise only in your target demographic and region. This will help keep your exit rates low, as irrelevant visitors are kept away.
Conclusion
Managing a website is a gargantuan task. For businesses generating leads from their website, it is essential to maintain a good user experience and increase topical authority. Exit rate and bounce rate are two essentials in figuring out what visitors are thinking about your website and what experience they are having.
By systematically analysing the reasons for certain user behaviours, and using the methods and solutions given above, website owners can slowly but surely improve website performance in terms of traffic and conversions. Growing a website and managing to retain readers for longer periods of time is tough, but it is full of excitement and rewards.
FAQs
Which is more important bounce rate or exit rate?
Whether bounce rate is more important or exit rate depends on the type of intent you are catering to. If it is a commercial landing page designed for CTA engagement, then the bounce rate is a more important factor. However, if a multiple-page journey (such as shopping in e-commerce stores) is concerned, then the exit rate is more important.
What is the difference between exit rate and bounce rate in Adobe?
The exit rate measures what per cent of visitors leave after multiple page and interaction journeys, whereas the bounce rate measures what per cent of visitors leave from the first page they arrived on.
What is the difference between bounce rate and abandon rate?
Bounce rate is the percentage of drop-offs from single-page journeys on a website. On the other hand, the abandon rate refers to the percentage of users who leave multi-step and multi-page journeys without completing them, such as browsing shopping categories, adding a product to the cart, going to the cart, but not checking out and placing the order.
What is the difference between bounce rate and drop rate?
When the conversion funnel is left abruptly in the middle, it is said to be dropped by the user. For example, If multiple pages of information are needed in a checkout process for an e-commerce website, and the user fills in the first few, bu then leaves, they are said to have exited the conversion funnel. The bounce rate, however, measures visitors who came to a website and immediately exited the same page.
What is a good exit rate?
The answer depends on the context of the page. If the page is a ‘Thank you for placing your order’ page, for example, a high exit rate is a good one. On the other hand, for landing and product pages, high exit rates are bad for the business. Blogs or informational pages can have good or bad exit rates, depending on whether the user was able to satisfy their query.
