Exit Page

When a visitor decides to leave your website, that last page is identified as the end of a visit or session. Web analytics interpret the exit page as the page where readers didn’t find what they were looking for and therefore, went elsewhere. Evaluating exit pages can help you improve your site to make more valuable to a visitor or to turn an exit into a call to action (CTA).

Exit rates are a standard metric that marketers use when analyzing their site performance. Exit rates are not to be confused with bounce rates. “Bounce Rate is the percentage of single-page visits to total visits, whereas Exit Rate (% Exit) is the percentage of site exits that occur. A visitor, who visits your website, loads one page and leaves, is considered in both your Bounce Rate and your Exit Rate. A visitor, who visits your website, loads one page and continues on to another blog post or another page on your site, is considered in only your Exit Rate” (Wahl, 2012).

This is where I get confused, and maybe you do too. Everyone who comes to your site has to exit. The exits should always equal the number of entrances but the exit rate is a percentage calculated by dividing the number of exits into the total page views.

Exit rate is difficult, it’s important to understand the data and understand what your users are doing, but not clear if you should take further action. The perception is that the exit rate metric shows “leakage” from your website something should be fixed to prevent customers from leaving.

The reasons for an exit could be a user reading a review and then looking to buy in the store, or picks up the phone to contact your company or are they exiting your site because of usability issues. Knowing the exit page is not always useful. “The only solid exception to the rule is structured experiences that are of a “closed nature”. For example the Cart and Checkout experience. You add to cart, you click start checkout, you fill out your address and credit cart, and you hit submit and see the thank you page. In this structured experience it can be insightful to measure which page is the top exit page and why might that page causing “leakage” and how to fix it (Kaushik).

Bottom line is that the Exit page and Exit rates are not enough to determine if you should fix a page. Other factors must also be considered.  If the visitors to your website were engaged when they first entered, don’t you think they would visit another one of your pages instead of leaving? If an exit page is consistently the same page as the bounce page then you might want to consider exploring the metrics further. The lower the Bounce rate the better, and ultimately the more engaged your visitors will be on your website.

What do you think, is and exit rate metric useless to your webpage analysis?

Wahl, M. (May2012)  What is Bounce Rate in Google Analytics? Retrieved from: http://www.morevisibility.com/blogs/analytics/what-is-bounce-rate-in-google-analytics.html

Cornwall, J. (Aug2012) Top Exit Page Analysis? Retrieved from: http://www.webanalyticsworld.net/2012/08/top-exit-page-analysis.html

Kaushink, A. Standard Metrics Revisited: #2: Top Exit Pages. Occam’s Razor blog

Retrieved from: http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/standard-metrics-revisited-3-bounce-rate/