I think there is some confusion regarding the difference between bounce rates and exit rates. The purpose of this blog is to help explain the differences between the two and what this means for you. It's also a lot easier for me when I get people that ask me this same question over and over again. I'll simply send them a link to this page. Problem solved.
I'll start with bounce rates. A bounce is when someone comes to your website and leaves from the same page they enetered from without checking any other pages out.
This can mean one of two different things.
- 1.) They came, found what they were looking for and left. No extra pages were needed, they found what they were looking for on their entry page. If this is the case then congratulations. Chances are however that this isn't a likely result.
- 2.) They came, puked and left. That my friends is what we call a bounce.Visitor enters site, glances over it, and clicks the back button without traversing the site any further than the entance page. The worst part is that Google will use this as a ranking signal. Put it this way: if Google keeps sending you traffic and notices that the moment they land, they are back on Google searching for the exact same thing that they searched when they visited your site, then Google is going to think, "Hmmm... maybe I am ranking this website too high". The worst part is the visitor leaves your site after seeing one page then lands on a competitor's website and the spends the next 20 minutes having a great old time.
What can you do? You need to log into Google Analytics and check out what your worst performing pages are with the highest bounce rate. Maybe you are trying to rank these pages for something that they are not. If this is the case you need to either change what is on the page or delete the page altogether.
Now lets talk about an exit rate is. Firstly an 'exit' is when someone leaves your website after browsing more than one page. For example, they enter your website through the index page, make their way to the contact us page and then leave the website. The contact page would be classed as the exit page. An exit % which you will see in Google Analytics is a representation of the number of people that are exiting the website through a particular page. For example if 60% of visitors are exiting through the contact us page or request a quote page then that is a good thing. I mean they have to leave your site at some stage, may as well be the page where they were looking for your phone number of just filled out a quote request.
On the other hand if visitors are exiting your website through the checkout page then that poses a problem. Any page along the buying chain needs to be monitored daily. Do a content drilldown by pages search in Google Analytics and find out what the worst performing pages are in regards to exit percentages and isolate which ones are stopping the buying flow. Take action now. Look for patterns!
To check bounce rates and exit percentages, log into Google Analytics, click Content, site content, and pages. I have attached an image below to help demonstrate this.
