Digital measurement deciphered: bounce vs exit rate

Great digital marketing is closely tied with great digital measurement. But building the know-how when it comes to digital metrics can be complicated. There’s so much to know and it’s tricky to know where to start. Plus, some online guides don’t do a great job of explaining!

Bounce rate and exit rate are important metrics to be tracking on your website – but what exactly is the difference? And what’s a good percentage? Let’s take a closer look…

Bounce rate

What is bounce rate?

If a user arrives at your site and leaves, visiting no other pages, we say they’ve bounced. Google Analytics calculates bounce rate simply by looking at the proportion of visitors who arrived on your website at a particular page, then left without clicking through to other pages. Bounce rate can be calculated page-by-page or as an average for your site overall.

What is a good bounce rate?

Opinions vary on what makes a good bounce rate, but often it has to do with context and intent. Anything below 30% should be considered very healthy, but with today’s fickle web behaviours, and the trend towards single page and infinite scroll websites, 60-70% is something we commonly see. It’s all about making some practical optimisations (to copy, UX, navigation etc.) to help you reduce this number. Take a test-and-learn approach to making improvements so you can identify what changes are making a difference.

Exit rate

What is exit rate?

Exit rate is a measure that tracks where most users leave your site from after viewing a few pages. For example, if your “FAQ page” has a high exit rate, it means the majority of users browsing around left the website after they looked at this page.

What is a good exit rate?

The answer to this question all depends on the page you’re looking at, and the quality of other digital engagement metrics like time on page/site and average pages per visit. Some pages are intended to be ‘exit pages’ (like “thank you” pages), while others are just steps on the journey towards conversion (more information about your product, an enquiry form or sign-up page).

Are high bounce rates or exit rates always bad?

If we’re talking about bounce rates, most of the time the answer is yes. But the thing with digital measurement is that metrics are clues you need to piece together to discover a much larger and more detailed picture. It’s important not to look at any digital metric in isolation.

A high bounce rate on a particular page could mean that visitors didn’t find what they expected and left. But a high bounce rate could also mean that they’ve found exactly what they wanted and left satisfied! Likewise, high exit rates on “Thank you” pages are a great thing – they mean your user completed their journey and then left the website.

Need help deciphering your digital metrics? Digital audits, strategies, management and mentoring are our bread and butter. We’d love to help – get in touch!