Exit rate is the percentage of visitors who leave a website from a particular page after
visiting at least one other page in the site. The theoretical definition of exit rate is not
always mapped to how analytics packages calculate and display exit rate. Google Analytics,
for example, uses the following formula to calculate the exit rate on a page:
| Single page exit rate = Number of page exits / Number of page views |
The number of page views used in the formula includes single page visits. As a result,
exit rate as displayed in Google includes bounce rate.
Standard reporting for most analytics packages includes bounce and exit rates for
different pages on a site. The following example illustrates how bounce and exit rates are
calculated.
A page receives 10,000 page views within a single day, and of those views, there are
1,800 entrances. Of the 1,800 entrances to the page, 1,000 visitors leave immediately. A
total of 2,500 exit the site after arriving at the page.
| Bounce rate = Number of single page visits / Total number of entrances to that
page |
| Bounce rate = 1,000 / 1,800 = 55.55% |
| Exit rate = Number of page exits / Number of page views |
| Exit rate = 2,500 / 10,000 = 25% |
Notice that the 2,500 exits from the page include the 1,000 exits that resulted from a
single page view.
You might be tempted to use the single page exit rate formula to calculate the website
exit rate. But since all visitors will exit your website, that rate will be 100%, which
does not tell you a lot. Instead, here’s an updated website exit rate:
| Website exit rate = Average (Single page exit rates) |
How can exit rate help you determine where to start optimization?
Figure 2-4 shows the top exit pages report from Google Analytics. You might be tempted to pick
pages with exit rates higher than the site average to start optimization. A better
approach is to establish a standard acceptable exit rate for
different pages on the site based on their function. For a page to be considered for
optimization, it needs to meet the following criteria:
-
The page’s exit rate is higher than the established acceptable exit rate based on
the page function.
-
The number of unique page views is higher than x, where
x is dependent on the size of the site and how much revenue you
can generate by reducing the exit rate for a page. For some of our clients,
x is 500 page views; for others, x is
5,000 page views.
