What is Exit Rate in Analytics? Exit Rate vs Bounce Rate

If you have run some sort of analytics software on your site like Google Analytics or maybe you have another built-in to your wordpress site with a plugin or your webhost provider provides stats and metrics then one of those metrics is called Exit Rate.  Exit rate is often confused with Bounce Rate but this post will explain what is Exit Rate in Analytics and what is the difference between Exit Rate and Bounce Rate.

What is Exit Rate in Analytics?

Exit Rate vs Bounce Rate

What is Exit Rate ?

Exit rate as a term used in web site traffic analysis (sometimes confused with bounce rate) is the percentage of visitors to a site who actively click away to a different site from a specific page, after possibly having visited any other pages on the site. The visitors just exited on that specific page. Simply put, a page’s Exit Rate is the number of times where that page was the last page viewed in a session, divided by the total page views for that page. Every visitor’s session comes to an end sometime, whether that visitor looked at one, ten, or fifty pages. Whatever page was viewed last in the session is the “exit page”. The number of times that page was the “exit page” divided by the total number of times that page was viewed is the Exit Rate for that page.

Why is the Exit Rate Useful ?

So Why is knowing the Exit Rate useful ?  Well Exit Rate is suppose to give you an indication of “leakage”— and determine just what pages are causing people to fall off your site. What is really more important is what did they do before they exited that is important! For Example: If you have an ecommerce site and they made a purchase, then your site accomplished what you wanted. Of course the confirmation of payment page will be the exit page so in this case it is rather unimportant because it is expected that that page is the Exit Page.  Other pages with high exit rates which you would not expect people to leave from are of a larger concern. Possibly, but if they made a purchase, and then clicked on just one more page to review something, perhaps the shipping page to see what carrier will be used, and then left, is that saying something bad about the shipping page? Absolutely not! The site did its job very well. If someone in research mode came and looked at six different products you offer and then left, is the product page for that last product they looked at underperforming? Of course not. If someone actually adds something to the cart but plans to come back tomorrow to finish the order for some reason, does the Exit from the Cart page indicate a problem? Certainly not. In all these cases, the site is doing what you want it to do. Whereas Bounces point to a specific problem (user entered site, user was unimpressed, user left without doing anything), Exits tell you nothing without knowing what happened in the session prior to the exit. So as a rule of thumb, don’t get too hung up on Exit Rate.

Should you be concerned about High Exit Rates?

The simple answer is YES.  There are some pages that you definitely prefer not to have any exits from. If you have a three step checkout process, once the user starts the process, you definitely want them to finish. So high exit rates on steps one and two can possibly be things to explore. But even then, it helps to know if those visits eventually led to completed orders or not. For sites with a Site Search function, you should expect a low exit rate on the Search page. A high exit rate would mean that they searched, didn’t see anything in the results that enticed them to click, so they left. A high exit rate on your Search Results page can be an indicator of a problem with your search function and that it is not providing relevent results I’m sure there are other exceptions, but even in these cases, if you’re seeing a high exit rate and think you have reason to be concerned, I’d recommend that you take the steps to be able to review those sessions in more detail before drawing any conclusions about your perceived problems. It doesn't hurt to check that all of your external links are opening in a new window so people aren't accidentally leaving your site when they want to see something that interests them but also want to stay on your site. People can get caught up clicking one link to another and they forget how to get back to the initial page that they originally came to see on your site. I personally have a Facebook like search engine to hopefully get visitors to search and find what they are looking for. I am also actively looking for ways to improve speed and performance like I recently started using Cloudinary CDN to Host my images which takes the load of my hosting company Dreamhost which they also have teamed up with CloudFlare CDN which Cloudflare often tons of options for performance, speed, caching and is also helping to take the load off of my host Dreamhost If you are still concerned check out SearchEngineWatch.com's 20 Things to Consider (to Reduce Bounce Rate) or Infographicsmania's Decrease Exit Rate Infographics Also check out my post on What is Bounce Rate ?  Keep reading if you want the long and complicated edition of what is Bounce Rate straight from Google's site. Exit Rate vs Bounce Rate

(complicated explanation from Google plus an infographic from kissmetrics)

To understand the difference between exit and bounce rates for a particular page in your site, keep in mind three things:

1. For all pageviews to the page, the exit rate is the percentage that were the last in the session.


2. For all sessions that start with the page, bounce rate is the percentage that were the only one of the session.


3. The bounce rate calculation for a page is based only on visits that start with that page.  

Let's clarify this last point with a simple example. Your site has pages A through C, and only one session per day exists, with the following pageview order:

• Monday: Page A > Page B > Page C


• Tuesday: Page B > Page A > Page C


• Wednesday: Page A > exit

The content report for Page A would show 3 pageviews and a 50% bounce rate.  You might have guessed that the bounce rate would be 33%, but the Tuesday pageview granted to Page A is not considered in its bounce rate calculation. Consider that a bounce is the notion of a session with only one interaction from the visitor, and the session-centric analysis answers a simple yes/no question: "Did this session contain more than one pageview?" If the answer to that question is "no," then it's important to consider which page was involved in the bounce.  If the answer is "yes," then it only matters that the initial page in the session lead to other pageviews.  For that reason, bounce rate for a page is only meaningful when it initiates the session. Now let's extend this example to explore the Exit rate and Bounce rate metrics for a series of single-session days on your site.

• Monday: Page B > Page A > Page C


• Tuesday:  Page B > Exit


• Wednesday:  Page A > Page C > Page B


• Thursday:  Page C > Exit


• Friday: Page B > Page C > Page A

The % Exit and Bounce rate calculations are: Exit Rate: 

• Page A: 33% (only 3 of 5 sessions included Page A)


• Page B: 50% (only 4 of 5 sessions included Page B)


• Page C: 50% (only 4 of 5 sessions included Page C)

Bounce Rate:

• Page A: 0% (no sessions began with Page A, so it has no bounce rate)


• Page B: 33% (bounce rate is higher than exit rate, because 3 sessions started with Page B, with one leading to a bounce)


• Page C: 100% (one session started with Page C, and it lead to a bounce)