Page Exit Ratio: Why are People Leaving my Website?

Kaushik states that the exit rate metric measures how many visitors exited your website from a specific page (2010). The page exit ratio (also known as the “exit rate”) is calculated by dividing the “number of exits on a page by the total number of page views” on that same page (Reed College of Media, 2018). 

Essentially, the exit ratio should be an indicator of the weaker pages on your website; however, it’s important for businesses to keep in mind that exit rates should be examined carefully, as visitors have to leave your website at some point. 

When analyzed correctly, page exit ratios can give businesses insight to pages that aren’t performing as well as others and guide them to where they should place their attention for website updates and optimizations. By looking into pages with high exit rates, businesses may be able to uncover more about the visitor’s intention and what they can do better to increase sales and revenue. 

• Are users coming to your website in search of an answer and not finding it?
• How can you do a better job at promoting your goods or services on this page to help drive conversions?
• How is the overall user experience on this page? Does the page load slowly or are there other technical problems?
• What content can you add to your website to keep visitors more engaged and not leave?

Amit Kursija notes that there are two types of exit rates that analysts should look at natural and unnatural exit rates; natural exit rates occur on order confirmation or thank you pages, meaning the visitor has completed a purchase and resulted in a conversion (2017). Unnatural exit rates come from pages that are meant to push customers deeper into the conversion funnel, if high exit rates come from these pages, businesses should turn their attention to what can be done to decrease the exit rate.

Online Electronics Retail: Decreasing Exit Rate

Web analytics company, Nabler was contacted to help an online electronic retailer decrease the exit rate and improve the overall conversion rate for their speakers’ product page.  After an in-depth analysis of the website and specific webpages, Nabler found that the website lacked clear call-to-actions (CTAs), clean design, and usability. They implemented new features that increased these factors, such as: (Nabler, n.d.).

• Transitioning the way products were listed from list view to grid view
• Clear CTA buttons that included “FREE SHIPPING” and “ADD TO CART”
• Adding a compare feature so users could compare multiple products to ensure they were purchasing the right one

After a number of tests over a 10-week period, Nabler was able to decrease the exit rate on the website product page from 75 percent to 37 percent. 

How Businesses Can Use Exit Rates

As stated above, businesses can use exit rates to dig deeper into the pages that aren’t performing as well as they should and causing visitors to leave their website without making a purchase.

By understanding exit rates on their website, businesses can learn who is leaving their website (Dobre, 2015). Businesses can understand more about the audience they’re successfully reaching, but unsuccessfully converting into customers; they can ask themselves, “What information is this audience segment looking for that we are not providing?”

Businesses can also analyze exit rates by device in Google Analytics, if they’re seeing a high exit rate from mobile users, maybe they can implement a website that is more mobile-friendly to keep users onsite longer. 

Like other metrics available in the web analytics world, decisions should not be made by only analyzing exit rate. For example, exit rate can be more beneficial when analyzed alongside the visit session as a whole. Analysts can see what pages the user visited, for how long, and the path that led them to their exit page. Smart marketers and business professionals need to look at the whole picture in order to make a beneficial data-driven decision. 

References: 

Dobre, E. (2015, July 16). 3 Actionable Steps To Reduce Your Website’s Exit Rates With Omniconvert. Omniconvert. Retrieved on January 21, 2018 from https://blog.omniconvert.com/how-to-reduce-your-websites-exit-rates-with-marketizator.html

Kaushik, A. (2010). Web Analytics 2.0: The Art of Online Accountability & Science of Customer Centricity. Indianapolis, Indiana: Wiley.

Kursija, A. (2017, February 10). Metrics You Should Be Tracking (But You’re Not): Exit Rate. Foxmetrics. Retrieved on January 21, 2018 from https://www.foxmetrics.com/blog/metrics-tracking-exit-rate/

Nabler. (n.d.). Reducing Category Page Exit Rate By Over 50% For An Online Electronics Retailer. Retrieved on January 21, 2018 from https://www.nabler.com/case-studies/download/reduce-exit-rate.pdf

Reed College of Media (2018). IMC 642, Lesson 1. Retrieved January 21, 2018 from https://ecampus.wvu.edu/webapps/blackboard/execute/displayLearningUnit?course_id=_97081_1&content_id=_4434991_1&framesetWrapped=true

Web Analytics Association. (2008, September 22). Web analytics definitions. Retrieved on January 21, 2018 from: http://www.digitalanalyticsassociation.org/Files/PDF_standards/WebAnalyticsDefinitions.pdf