Let’s say a user lands on a page on your website and then navigates to a few additional pages. Exit rate marks the percentage of users who left your site from the last within the session. These multiple page views are what makes exit rate different than bounce rate, which is calculated based on only sessions that start and end with a certain page.
While user activity such as pogo sticking is more detrimental to your SEO rank, exit rate, much like bounce rate, speaks more to the user experience of your site. Indicative of navigational issues, bad UI, poor content, or even slow load times, high exit rates signal potential breaks in the user journey which could be directly impacting things conversions.
Every site should measure exit rate carefully, being mindful of the context in which a user is navigating the site. For example, if you have a paginated article – say three pages – and the exit rate on the last page is high, the implication might be different than a user falling off within the conversion funnel. Therefore, pages that should naturally create further engagement or are designed to elicit action, but don’t, should be optimized accordingly.
