What is Exit rate?

Exit rate is an ecommerce analytic metric that signifies the last page a user views before they navigate away from a website. Unlike bounce rate, which quantifies how many users leave your website after viewing the first page, an exit rate takes into account multiple pages viewed during a user’s session. For instance, if a user visits the home page, clicks through to a product page, then exits from the website, the exit rate metric will be calculated based on the product page as that was the final page that the user engaged with before leaving the website.

Formula

Exiting Rate = (Total exits from a page/ Total views of the page) * 100

Example

If a page accumulates a total of 500 views and 200 exits, then the exit rate would be calculated as (200 / 500) * 100 = 40%.

Why is Exit rate important?

Understanding your website’s exit rate is critical in identifying problematic pages that may be causing visitors to leave. High exit rates can indicate poor user experience, a lack of meaningful content, or a lack of clear navigational paths. Furthermore, exit rate analysis provides quantitative data to assess pages’ end-role within the conversion funnel, for instance, whether they are losing out potential customers further down the funnel or successfully directing them to the conversion actions.

Which factors impact Exit rate?

Various factors can affect your exit rate, including page design, relevancy of content, ease of navigation, and page loading speed. Broken links, unappealing visuals, lack of relevant information, poor website structure, or slow load times can all push a visitor to ‘exit’.

How can Exit rate be improved?

Improving exit rate involves enhancing user experience by ensuring your pages are well optimised. This may involve simple fixes like rectifying broken links or more comprehensive strategies like improving page layout, boosting page load speed, delivering high-quality, relevant content, and providing clear and compelling call-to-action buttons. Regular A/B testing can also help in identifying what works best to reduce exit rates.

What is Exit rate’s relationship with other metrics?

Exit rate is inextricably linked to other ecommerce metrics. For instance, a high exit rate combined with a low conversion rate may indicate a leaky sales funnel, where prospective customers are falling off before completing a purchase. Similarly, high exit rates could coincide with high bounce rates, indicating that not only are users leaving from certain pages, they are not finding what they need from your site as a whole. Understanding how these metrics interrelate can provide a more holistic view of your website’s performance.