Exit Rate and Bounce Rate - What's the Difference

Exit rate and bounce rate are two metrics that sound very similar but in reality are very different. They can both be used to gauge how well you're doing in terms of content quality and user behavior. Here's what each of these means.

==> What Does Bounce Rate Mean?

Your bounce rate is the number of people who leave your website without visiting any other page. It's measured on a page level, so you can see your bounce rate from any particular page.

A high bounce rate on a page generally means users aren't satisfied in some way. It could be that the content isn't good enough. It could be that your navigation structure is confusing. It could be any number of things.

The bounce rate won't tell you exactly what to fix, but it does give you a good idea of whether a page is working or not.

Generally a bounce rate of 55% or higher is considered quite bad. If you're over 50%, that means over half of your visitors are simply leaving your site. On the other hand, anything 35% or lower is considered stellar.

==> What Does Exit Rate Mean?

Your exit rate is the number of people who leave your website from that particular page.

Exit rate can be a bit of a mixed bag. A high exit rate doesn't necessarily mean users aren't satisfied. For example, if you have a step-by-step guide, it's only natural that users will leave your site at the last page of your guide.

Your exit rate can be used to compare the effectiveness of different kinds of pages. So if one content page has a drastically different exit rate than another page, you might have to seriously look at the higher exit rate page.

==> A Few Examples

Just to clearly illustrate the difference between bounce rate and exit rate, here are a few examples.

Example 1: A user comes to your website and leaves without clicking a link. That counts as both an exit and a bounce from that page.

Example 2: Someone came to this page from another page on your site, then leaves your website. This counts as an exit, but not a bounce.

Example 3: Someone comes to this page from another page on your website, then goes to another page on your website. This is neither a bounce nor an exit. It will count as an exit from the page they leave from.

As you can tell, though these two metrics are related, they aren't the same thing. The bounce rate can be used to identify weak pages, while the exit rate needs to be treated a little more carefully. When using exit rate as a metric, make sure to ask yourself why a page's exit rate is low or high rather than just looking at the number.