What is the difference between bounce rate and exit rate?

Started by Roy Milson, 12-20-2016, 05:52:14

Previous topic - Next topic

Roy MilsonTopic starter

What is the difference between bounce rate and exit rate?


JohnVilson

A high bounce rate on a home page is usually a sign that something is wrong. But again, ensure you have a close look at the sources and keywords that are driving traffic. You might have a very low bounce rate for few keywords and very high for others. Maybe you're getting a lot of StumbleUpon traffic which, by its very nature, has a high bounce rate.

Exit rate is the percentage of people who left your site from that page. Exits may have viewed more than one page in a session. That means they may not have landed on that page, but simply found their way to it through site navigation.


luffy268

Bounce Rate is the percentage of single-page sessions (i.e. sessions in which the person left your site from the entrance page without interacting with the page).
Exit rate as a term used in web site traffic analysis (sometimes confused with bounce rate) is the percentage of visitors to a site who actively click away to a different site from a specific page, after possibly having visited any other pages on the site. The visitors just exited on that specific page.

ORLOVA

Bounce Rate is the percentage of visitors that visit a page on your website and don't visit any other pages.
The Exit Rate on the other hand is the percentage of people who have left the page but would have previously visited other pages.

hynds

Exit Rate vs. Bounce Rate

At a glance
To understand the difference between Exit Rate and Bounce Rate for a particular page, keep the following points in mind:


  • For all pageviews to the page, Exit Rate is the percentage that were the last in the session.
    For all sessions that start with the page, Bounce Rate is the percentage that were the only one of the session.
    Bounce Rate for a page is based only on sessions that start with that page.

In depth
Let's clarify this last point with a simple example. Your site has pages A through C, and only one session per day exists, with the following pageview order:

Monday: Page A > Page B > Page C
Tuesday: Page B > Page A > Page C
Wednesday: Page A > exit
The Content report for Page A would show 3 pageviews and a 50% bounce rate.  You might have guessed that the Bounce Rate would be 33%, but the Tuesday pageview granted to Page A is not considered in its Bounce Rate calculation. Consider that a bounce is the notion of a session with only one interaction from the user, and the session-centric analysis answers a simple yes/no question: "Did this session contain more than one pageview?" If the answer to that question is "no," then it's important to consider which page was involved in the bounce.  If the answer is "yes," then it only matters that the initial page in the session lead to other pageviews.  For that reason, bounce rate for a page is only meaningful when it initiates the session.

Now let's extend this example to explore the Exit rate and Bounce rate metrics for a series of single-session days on your site.

Monday: Page B > Page A > Page C
Tuesday:  Page B > Exit
Wednesday:  Page A > Page C > Page B
Thursday:  Page C > Exit
Friday: Page B > Page C > Page A
The % Exit and Bounce Rate calculations are:

Exit Rate:

Page A: 33% (3 of 5 sessions included Page A)
Page B: 50% (4 of 5 sessions included Page B)
Page C: 50% (4 of 5 sessions included Page C)
Bounce Rate:

Page A: 0% (one session began with Page A, but that was not a single-page session, so it has no Bounce Rate)
Page B: 33% (Bounce Rate is less than Exit Rate, because 3 sessions started with Page B, with one leading to a bounce)
Page C: 100% (one session started with Page C, and it lead to a bounce)

Source: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/2525491?hl=en