Bounce rate and Exit rate are important metrics in Google Analytics to keep tabs on if you’re a marketer. It is a direct indicator of how users actually experience your site.
While bounce rate and exit rate in Analytics are important metrics, it is essential to understand what they actually mean and whether they accurately represent the user experience on your site.
This blog looks at the difference between exit rate and bounce rate in Analytics and how you can use them to understand your website better.
The main difference between a Bounce Rate and an Exit Rate is Bounce rate and exit rate are two very different metrics that give a completely different understanding of how a user interacts with a site.
Bounce rate only looks at visitors who view just one page before leaving the site. It doesn’t look at how they end up on that page. This means that if a visitor came to the website, bounced, and then left, it would still count as one bounce even though they ended up exiting the site.
Exit rate measures the number of users who exit a website from a specific page. The bounce rate only looks at a one-page view. If users view more than one page, they won’t be counted in the bounce rate.
An example of this is that you may have 10000 visitors per week coming to your web page say it home page, but 8000 of these bounce from viewing just home page each time they come to the site. This would give you an exit rate of 80% and a bounce rate of 80%.
Now take another example, if 100 people land on the homepage, and 50 of those people leave without visiting any other pages, then the bounce rate of the homepage is 50%. However, the homepage may receive 400 pageviews over that same time period, and only 50 of those leave the site from the homepage. In that case, the exit rate would be 12.5%.ss
If you also had 5000 visitors coming to the web page, but 2000 of these left after viewing five pages on each visit, then your bounce rate would be 40%, but your exit rate would still be 80%.
Bounce rate is a great metric to use when looking at internal site issues. If you have a very high bounce rate, it could indicate that users are having problems finding what they want. It may also point toward usability issues which you should look into further.
However, although similar to bounce rate, exit rate should not be used as the only metric for understanding user behavior.
If you have a continually high bounce rate and high exit rate, then there may be issues with how your content is organized or displayed on the site.
For example, it could highlight that users are bounced from pages because of slow loading times or accessibility issues. Alternatively, your website design could attract users to click on links they didn’t intend to click on. This could be due to a poorly designed navigation system, or perhaps an advert which is too eye-catching.
Bounce rate and exit rate are both very useful metrics when looking at how users interact with your website. However, it’s important not to use them in isolation as you’ll get a better idea of what might be happening by looking at both metrics.
Exit rate is one of the most important metrics to keep an eye on if you are a marketer. It tells you which pages on your site are resulting in visitors leaving the site more than they should be. This is more of an indication that something is wrong rather than just telling you how users are experiencing your website.
The exit rate is calculated by looking at the number of page views per visit. This means that if a user viewed two pages in their visit, it only counts as one exit.
To calculate your exit rate, you need to do the following:
Total Exit From Page / Total Visits To Page= % Exit Rate.
If this percentage is high, or even 100%, this will tell you that most of your visitors are leaving your site from a particular page.
Bounce rate is the percentage of a single page session while visiting only entrance page and leaving your website immediately. It doesn’t consider what pages they viewed on their visit, just that they viewed one page and then left. This can be caused by many different factors, some good and some bad.
It is calculated by taking the total number of single-page visits and dividing it by the total number of all site visits.
(Total single-page visits / Total site visits) x 100 = Bounce Rate
Example: In a month, a website had 10000 total visitors, 8000 of which only viewed one page on their visit. The bounce rate for this month would be 80%.
Let’s take an example of a simple website with four pages so that better understanding of the difference between these can be make.
Page Names: Product Page, Product Detail, Confirmation Page and Contact Us Page
We can imagine five different sessions to this website during last week.
Out of the above five sessions, there were only two bounces.
Even though exits occurred on all five days, bounces occurred only on Monday and Thursday because those were the only two days where the visitor exited as soon as they entered the site. On every other day, the visitor visited at least two pages before exiting.
For these five sessions, the following Google Analytics report would be produced.
Always keep in mind that exits can be more than one-page visits whereas bounces are always one-page visits.
These metrics help you to identify what is working well on your site, and what isn’t. Bounce rate lets you know how many users are exiting the site by hitting just one page, whereas exit rate tells you which pages are causing people to leave.
You can then use this information to help guide improvements for your website. For example, if the majority of your exit rates are coming from a particular page, there may be something about this page that isn’t working for users. Maybe the information they expected to find on this page wasn’t there, or perhaps links weren’t as prominent as they had been on other pages.
By looking at bounce rates and exit rates, you’ll get a better idea of how users approach your website, and what is causing them to leave.
The bounce and exit rate can be higher, depending on how each page is set up. This can be due to several reasons:
These are just some of the reasons why your bounce and exit rate could be higher. The important thing is that you’ve now identified this as a problem area and can begin putting steps in place to improve things.
Bounce rate and exit rate can affect your marketing performance in several ways:
If you have a high bounce rate, this is an indication that your website content isn’t relevant or useful to users.
This affects your SEO as Google takes user satisfaction into account when ranking websites. If people aren’t staying on your site and finding the information they’re looking for quickly and easily, your bounce rate will suffer. This means you’ll be ranked lower by Google and will therefore receive fewer visitors.
If your exit rate is high, this tells you that users aren’t finding what they want quickly enough to justify staying on the site. They are exiting halfway through their visit instead of sticking around and reading more content or looking at related products, services, or offers. This means you’ll be losing potential business, especially if the exiting pages are the ones that show you what your users were initially looking for.
To view your exit rate and bounce rate, you need to go into Google Analytics. Click on ‘Behavior’ then Site Content and click All Pages on that table showing on the right side, you will find these metrics.
If you want to reduce your bounce rate, make sure that the content of your website is relevant and useful.
A lower exit rate can certainly be seen as positive, but it’s important to bear in mind that the goal of your website is to generate leads. If you have a high Exit Rate but are converting at least some of this traffic into sales or contacts then it may not be something you need to worry about. You’ll only want to begin focusing on it if your Exit Rate starts to impact conversion or ROI.
A high bounce rate can be seen as bad for your business, so you should aim to reduce it by making sure that users who arrive on your site are able to find what they’re looking for. You need to make sure that the content of your website is relevant and useful in order to ensure a low bounce rate.
Bounce rate and exit rate are important indicators of how satisfied your users are with your website content. If they’re bouncing or exiting from a high number of pages, you know that something isn’t right and needs to be dealt with as soon as possible.
Use the bounce and exit rate metrics in Google Analytics to help determine what content you should be working on so that users have a better experience when they visit your website.
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