An ‘Exit Rate’ is the number of visitors that leave your website after viewing several pages.
An exit rate doesn’t necessarily tell you anything bad, after all, all website visitors will leave your website at some point. Whether that’s when they have gained the information they were looking for, completed a contact form, or made a purchase.
Looking at the exit rate for pages on your website allows you to see where visitors are leaving your website. If it’s on pages that you expect them to leave from – such as the completed purchase page or the 'Contact Us' page - then you can be assured that people are achieving the goal that you have set for your website.
However, if you are seeing a high exit rate on pages such as your basket page, key product pages, or even general information pages, this gives you confirmation that these pages aren’t quite right.
These types of pages are great places to focus your marketing efforts.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I calculate the exit rate for my website?
The best place to see your exit rate is on Google Analytics.
However, if you have the raw data you can calculate the exit rate by dividing the number of exits from the page by the number page views of the page. Both of these figures will be within your Google Analytics account.
How can I improve my exit rate?
To improve your exit rate you first need to know why your exit rate is high.
A high exit rate can be from any number of things, including...
- Poor/irrelevant content
- Poor/irrelevant imagery/videos
- High prices
- Annoying pop-ups
- Confusing menus
- A slow website
- Design not meeting expectations
- Scammy/spammy messages
Whilst you can check your Google Analytics account to see what the exit rates are on each page of your website, you can also use a Heatmap tool to see what your customers are doing on each page which in turn might highlight common weak points or irrelevant content.
Another useful thing you can do to improve your exit rates is to ask your customers. Simple, but often the last thing that a business does.
An onsite survey, or even a focus group of your current or ideal audience, can help you get feedback on your website. Asking questions like…
- what people like/don’t like about your website
- whether the information shown is clear/logical
- whether the next step is clear/logical
- whether there are elements that are stopping them from purchasing or completing that contact form – prices, lack of information, etc.
Ultimately, improving the user experience of your website is key to improving your website’s exit rate.
Is the exit rate the same as the bounce rate?
No.
They are similar but there is one key difference.
The exit rate is the number of people who leave a specific page even if they originally entered the website via a different page. The bounce rate is the number of people who land on a specific page and leave that specific page.
For example…
If someone lands on this specific blog post and immediately leaves this specific blog to return their search results within Google - that would be a bounce and push up our bounce rate.
Whereas, if someone lands on this specific blog post and then clicks on our ‘Contact’ page to grab our email address before leaving the Digital Nachos site, that interaction would be recorded within our exit rate. The individual in question did not bounce off this specific blog post as they moved to a different page within our website, and they didn’t bounce off our ‘Contact’ page as they arrived on our ‘Contact’ page from within our website.
If you are looking to improve your exit rate, or simply want to know what it currently is, then get in touch with the team here at Digital Nachos. We can review your current website and work with you to improve it.
Published: 5th Feb 2024