Having a successful online presence doesn’t stop at just having a great website. Once everything is up and running and you have visitors to your website, you will need to begin analyzing your visitors usage and flow through your website. One of the most important metrics you’re going to need to analyze is your bounce rate compared with your exit rate.
What Is Bounce Rate?
Bounce rate is the metric used to measure the number of people who land on a page and leave without navigating to or viewing any other pages on your website. This is typically perceived as a bad thing, but it truly depends on what the purpose of your website is. For example, if you have an eCommerce site and your homepage, where no one purchases any items, has a 90% bounce rate, then you likely have a problem. Why? Because if they aren’t navigating around your website viewing products, then you don’t stand a chance to sell them anything. If 90% of the people who land there leave without navigating anywhere else, it means 90% of your web traffic sees your homepage and decides they would rather go somewhere else to purchase whatever item they are looking for.
If, on the other hand, you have a landing page that is intended to make someone pick up the phone and call you, a high bounce rate might be a good thing. In a situation like this you would really need to compare the amount of people viewing the page with the amount of people calling you. If 90% of your page views is the same number of people that call you, then you might have struck gold with your landing page.
What Is Exit Rate?
Exit rate is the metric used to measure the number of people who have left your website from that page. This might sound like the same thing as bounce rate immediately, but they are very different. Remember, the bounce rate only tracks when someone lands on a page and exits that page without viewing any others. The exit rate only measures when they leave your page, regardless of how they got there.
Analyzing The Data
When analyzing either the exit rate or bounce rate for a page, you need to consider what the ultimate goal for that page is. If you want to keep them engaged and browsing your website, then you want both of these to be as low as possible.
A high exit rate should typically only be expected on the last page of a user flow. If you have built your website to have viewers navigate through four different pages and your second page has a high exit rate, then something is amiss. You’re going to need to dig into that second page and find out where and why you are losing them.
Whatever your game plan, remember one of the most important things for any business is to keep the customer coming back. If your page is truly an exit page, make sure you did your best to get them on your mailing list before they leave. If it is a landing page intended to make them call you, make sure you capture their name and number when they do call. This way you can always call them to drum up some more business down the road.
If you’re not sure where you can view data like your bounce rate or exit rate, you need to implement an analytics program. Google Analytics is a free, easy-to-use analytics tool used by companies of all sizes. We can help you install and setup your analytics tool to ensure you are capturing the best data possible for your business.