Exit rate

Exit rate is the percentage of users who exit a site’s web page after clicking the links on the initial web page and checking several other pages. Tracking the rate enables companies to boost conversion and retention after determining web pages with poor performance, optimizing content and speed load time, and identifying and eliminating other technical issues.

In this article, we’ll uncover the importance of an exit rate and compare it with a bounce rate. We’ll also explore the formula to estimate the indicator and tips to reduce it.

Why is the exit rate important?

Keeping up with an exit rate is crucial since it enables businesses to unveil web pages with poor performance. A high exit rate serves companies as an alarm to analyze and figure out problems visitors face. There might be various causes for underperforming web pages, such as long page load time, content that needs optimization, and inefficient call-to-action buttons. Marketers pay attention to the page's design, visuals, font, and color scheme to prevent different problems. After working on the issues, they can reduce the exit rate and increase the number of repeat customers.

The metric enables the company’s team to identify web pages last in the session and evaluate the usefulness of its website for visitors. As a result, marketers can unveil why people instantly leave some of the website’s pages. Once the team managed to do web page optimization, this business can improve conversions and customer retention.

Now let’s find the distinctive features of exit and bounce rates.

Exit Rate vs Bounce Rate

Since there’s often a misinterpretation of exit and bounce rate, we’ll explain the difference between these similar metrics. It’s time to have a closer look at each of them.

Exit rate is the percentage of users who leave a page after visiting several other web pages of a specific website. Once users find your website in search results, they land on it. After reading the content, they might face some difficulties with the terms or strive to get more information about your company and product, so they follow other links. If they leave after exploring several web pages, the exit rate increases and negatively influences your business. To prevent it, you should have a track of low-performing web pages and make everything possible for their optimization.

Bounce rate is the percentage of users who land on a page and leave it without performing any other actions and visiting other web pages. The metric covers single-engagement sessions during which users don’t interact with the elements of the web pages. They neither comment, click the links, nor proceed to the related pages.

To put it simply, if a user visits a single page and instantly leaves it, we talk about a bounce rate, yet if a user lands on a page, clicks the links, proceeds to other web pages of the same site, and then leaves, we talk about exit rate.

Now that you know the difference, it’s time to figure out how to calculate the metric.

How to calculate the exit rate?

If you want to estimate the exit rate for your company, you can use the formula below.

Exit Rate = Total Exits from Page / Total Page Visits

After using this formula and calculating the percentage, you can find out the percentage of visits last in the session. This means that a user leaves a web page after performing some activity on your website. For instance, a visitor can land on a page, click links to explore some topics, and exit a page.

It’s time to reveal the strategies to reduce the exit rate.

How to reduce the exit rate?

Companies with high exit rates should incorporate specific strategies to improve the situation and encourage conversions. We’ve gathered some essential steps you should do to reduce the metric. So, let’s dive in.

• Consider boosting page load time. Every second makes a difference for a user. If you don’t want to lose potential customers, you need to make sure that all pages of your site load fast. The speed of your website influences your exit and bounce rate a lot. According to WebsiteBuilderExpert, web pages that load within two seconds have a bounce rate of 9%, while pages that load in five seconds have bounce rates of 38%.
• Provide excellent user experience. UX is crucial for converting visitors into customers. To provide a seamless user experience for your prospects, you need to structure your articles, consider building a table of contents, and use visuals. This way, visitors can easily perceive your content and find necessary information about your product.
• Make sure you have visible CTAs. You need to have a clear and visible call to action to let people take the desired action. As a result, you’ll increase customer engagement. Place relevant buttons after potential clients read valuable information.
• Add visuals to your content. Use infographics, videos, and other visuals to split your content into parts to clearly and easily convey all the necessary materials related to your product. By utilizing short videos, you have the chance to increase customer engagement, increase the time users spend on your web pages and educate people about important issues.
• Develop a good interlinking strategy. By redirecting visitors to other essential pages of your website, companies can provide deeper knowledge of the topic to their users and have them engaged with their company. If you don’t carry out a powerful interlinking strategy, the exit rate can increase. If you don’t want to let that happen, you need to add hyperlinks that will lead to other related web pages of your site. These pages should have a close connection to the topics people explore. Make sure to add links to relevant keywords so that visitors can understand what articles they can read next.

Since exit rate is a vital metric, you need to keep an eye on it. If, after the analysis, you find out that the rate is high, make use of our tips to make your business work properly.