Occasionally it’s worthwhile revisiting a well established / standard metric or report and taking a fresh look at it. The first metric I tend to look at is Visitors (Visits, Unique Visitors). The second metric, which I am going to focus on in this post, is a very standard metric Exit Rate and one specific report in particular.
Exit rates are not often the first metric marketers look at when analysing their sites performance. In Google Analytics, Exit page can be found in:
Content > Site Content > Exit Pages. This report gives you a breakdown of the number of Exits, pageviews and the % Exits.
GA takes the last page viewed in each user’s session and the report simply shows the pages that appear most frequently as the last one in visitor sessions.
Many marketers confuse bounce rate with exit rate but exit rates shows a site’s outflow. Where do users leave from after they start their session? This report should show and highlight which pages businesses should focus on to increase the chances of conversion.
It’s important to note that looking at this report you will clearly see that a lot of the high exit rate pages may not have anything to do with the conversion funnel. Users may visit your site for various reasons and it’s important to highlight these scenarios and their journeys.
It is also important to understand that most websites will have exit rates of around 97% (mainly e-commerce). Most of these exit pages will be pages you don’t want them to exit on. It’s hard to decide whether this is success or failure.
Exit rate is difficult, it’s important to understand the data and understand what your users may be doing. The reasons for an exit could be down to a user reading a review and then looking to buy in store, or picks up the phone to contact your company or are they exiting your site because of usability issues.
Top exit page analysis is a good way to highlight areas that may need focus but it is important to understand that there are more factors to site exit than just poor usability or communication. When using the Exit Report it’s vital to note what roles each page may be playing in onsite and offsite conversion and factoring that into your marketing decisions.
Gary says
August 15, 2012 at 6:29 pmI had no idea this was even in Google Analytics. Thanks for the great share. I am going to go check this out on my account right now. I will try to report back afterwards.
Christian says
April 9, 2013 at 10:00 amGA Exit pages show some great data. If you get it down to around 17% then you’re doing pretty good. Provided you’re selling digital content on the same site.
Brian says
June 6, 2013 at 2:52 amHi there,
I know this is an old post but I was looking for info on the Exit metric and this is quite good. I’ve another question. Is the exit the same as a click on a link? Might be a stupid question but I’m new to analytics.
We have a Get it Now button so someone on the landing page can can click into the Google Playstore to download our app. In Analytics this comes up as a page , get-it-now.html.
Does this mean that the person hit the landing page and then left or that they click on the button and went to the playstore?
Caroline says
September 23, 2013 at 8:46 amHi,
Does anyone know what ” / ” stand for under Exit Pages? It is our #1 exit page but we do not know what it refers to and where our customers are dropping off.
Thank you.
Peter Kirwan says
September 23, 2013 at 10:00 amHi Caroline,
/ stands for your home page.
Thanks
Peter K
Collin Davis says
December 11, 2013 at 4:35 amExit page is one of the first metrics that I look at when I am doing an audit of any website. And its truly valuable information that you can use to either change your site design or architecture.
For example, if I see that a page isn’t really getting a lot of engagement, I analyze the reasons why this may be happening. I look at competitors, their pages and see what improvements can be done on this front.
Also one of the other things that I do for large ecommerce or news websites whose pages have high exit rate is to check if they are present in the header menu.
If they are not doing that great in terms of exit and bounce rate, you are much better off with giving that real estate to a category that is doing much better.
Angela Wilkinson says
December 11, 2013 at 2:31 pmThanks for the comment Collin – that’s a great point about the header menu, especially on established sites where the header can become a bit of a forgotten asset!
Ange
Jordan says
July 30, 2015 at 11:25 amThanks for sharing. Taking a look into exit pages is a great way to establish to where to use call to actions for better user experience. It is also a good insight to what your potential customers are looking for the most.
Kelvin says
August 19, 2015 at 9:01 pmHi all,
All the comments are really helpful and thank all!
But I have a question about the Exit Rate. Suppose I enter a home page and click on a link. A new window is opened (call in Page A), but I am not interested in those products or information. Then I close the window and move back to the previous page (Home page) and the close it as well. In this case, should this Exit accounts for the Home Page or the Page A?
Thank you!
Kelvin C
Fiona Roddis says
August 20, 2015 at 2:26 amHi Kelvin,
Great question! On the basis that this is all within one browsing session we reckon that the exit counts for the homepage and not Page A, but we’ll see if our readers have any other advice or help!
Fiona
Kristian says
October 6, 2015 at 4:35 amHi, I’m new to GA, As you can where a customer comes from, can you also see where they’re exiting to?
Angela Wilkinson says
October 6, 2015 at 5:58 amHi Kristian, that would be lovely but this isn’t usually possible unless:
– They exit to a site that you also have GA tracking on (and have access to it)
– It’s to a specific link that you have on your page and you add event tracking code, then you can count the number of clicks on the link
As standard you can just see the exit page, the last one your customer was on before their session ended/they exited.
I hope that makes sense but shout back if you want to check anything!
You may already have checked this out, but … if you’re looking to improve your GA knowledge, have a look at https://analyticsacademy.withgoogle.com/. Google put together video lessons covering the basics through to Google Tag Manager.
Thanks!
Ange