What Is The Difference Between Bounce Rate And Exit Rate

What is bounce rate in GA (Google Analytics)?

Bounce rate is the rate of the amount of leaving traffic from the entrance page without any interaction.

It is involved with the page in which page your traffic land for the first time or land as an entry.

For example, now you are in this page. You have come to this page from Google search or social media or any referral site as an entry. You are reading this article. After finished this article if you direct go back from the page without any interaction then it will be a bounce for this page.

If you do any interaction like clicking on an ad or clicking on a link then it will not be bounce.

So, if your total entrance visitors of a page are 127 and among them 43 visitors leave your site without any interaction then your bounce rate will be (43/127) × 100 = 33%

That means (exit / total entrance visitors) × 100 = bounce rate

I think you have understood what is bounce rate actually.

How visitors bounce?

A visitor can bounce many ways

What is exit rate in GA?

Exit rate is the rate of total amount of exit form a specific page without any interaction.

The calculation is (exit / total visitor) × 100 = exit rate

I know you are not clear about it yet. You have to read the difference to know it clearly.

What is the difference between bounce rate and exit rate?

Example,

As I said before, if you go back form this site without any interaction then it will be a bounce as well as exit but if you click on an internal link of this page then it will not be a bounce or exit for this page.

But if you go to another page of this website and back from there without any interaction then it will be only exit for that page but will not be bounce because bounce rate is only related with the entrance page.

Let me describe it another way

Now,

Homepage has bounce rate of 33.33% and exit rate of 50%

“Article 1” has bounce rate of 66.66% and exit rate of 40%

“Article 2” has bounce rate of no bounce rate data and exit rate of 33.33%

“Article 3” has no bounce rate and no exit rate

I think now you clear about the difference between bounce rate and exit rate.

But this is not the end. There are something more important things involved with exit rate and bounce rate.

Which is more important rate?

Frankly I’m telling you both are important.

If you only concentrate on bounce rate then your exit rate will increase and if you only concentrate on exit rate then there will be a chance to increase your bounce rate.

Why your bounce rate important

If you are a blog site then people will come to your site and will read your article and will gather knowledge then go back. This is normal.

If in your article there has something to interact such as there are ads to click or affiliate link to click or related internal link to visit and visitors are not interacting then you should do something that make people interested to interact with your site.

Bounce rate and exit rate both are matter of interaction. A higher bounce rate indicates your visitors are not interacting with your site.

Suppose you are bringing traffic to your sales page but visitors are bouncing. So you have to fix your sales page so that your visitors interact with your sales page and buy the product.

Why your exit rate important

You know exit rate involves with any of your pages visited by visitors.

Suppose you are bringing your traffic to your sales page, people add your product to the cart but they are exiting form payment page.

There is no bounce, there is only exit but this exit rate is very harmful for your business.

You have to find out what is the problem with payment page. Why people are exiting form the page.

With Google analytics exit rate you can find in which step of your funnel most exit rate has and next you can solve the problem related to the step.

One more example especially for affiliate marketers.....

You have written an informative article on any topic and in this article you have interlinked with a product review related to that informative article.

Now visitors are going to the review article from this informative article but no one is clicking on your affiliate link. Everyone is exiting from this page.

This is a matter of tension. Your informative article has no problem but why people are exiting from the review page you have to find it out and improve it.

What is the average bounce rate?

I wanted to know the bounce rate of my email subscribers. 997 subscribers sent me their website’s bounce rate pictures. Among them I had found 7 websites had lowest bounce rate under 27% and roughly 377 websites had bounce rate of 80-95% which was highest.

Among these websites most of the websites had bounce rate between 45 to 70%. But that doesn’t mean that this is the average bounce rate.

This was average for my subscribers. I feel you should know it that’s why I informed about it to you.

Average bounce rate by segment

This is very tough to say the average bounce rate because bounce rate vary very much according to segment. This is not like that 70% is average bounce rate for all website or for all industry.

There is nothing like that.

Average bounce rate by website types

Blog Pages normally get a very high bounce rate. People generally come to a blog to read something to gather their knowledge. After gathering knowledge they go back. So there is not much interaction point available.

But some of blog websites bring an excellent bounce rate through their quality content with excellent internal linking and advertisements.

Squeeze pages or landing pages are also bounce worthy page because in a squeeze page visitors don’t have much interaction point without conversion. So if they don’t convert they direct go back.

Average bounce rate by industries

Different industries have different bounce rates because different industry related visitors have different conditions and their needs are different.

For example, according to the industry, the highest bounce rate is in the food and drink industry with a bounce rate of 65.62%, while the lowest is the real estate industry with a bounce rate of 44.50%. The difference between the two is about 20%.

Mostly food and drink related websites are generally restaurant websites. They normally add short information about their location, phone number and opening hours. Most viewers visit their site and after taking that information they go back.

On the other hand a real state website is normally more functional with more pages and features and they insist viewers to brows more.

Average bounce rate by traffic channel

A website gets traffic through different channels. Needless to say, the tendency to bounce traffic across all channels is not the same.

Survey found that traffic comes from emails have the lowest bounce rate at 35.20%, while traffic comes from display ads have the highest bounce rate at 56.50%.

Here too the difference between top and low is close to 20.

One thing to note from this is that the traffic that comes from the display ads are mainly for gathering information and most of them are not in action mode.

On top of that the display ads are occasionally displayed randomly which increases the chance to promote your ad to uninterested people.

On the other hand, most of the traffic expected from email is in action mode, so they tend to bounce less because they are laser targeted and generally emails are collected through giving them a related gift so generally they are so targeted.

Social traffic has the second highest bounce rate 54%. Normally social traffic view a site and gather information and then back to concentrate social browsing again. Moreover most social traffic comes from mobile and mobile users tend to more bounce than desktop.

Average bounce rate by device

I have said before that the tendency to bounce is very high among mobile users because their concentration points change frequently. Mobile users use different types of apps and this leads to different types of notifications which is a big reason to change their concentration points.

On the other hand desktop users produce the lowest bounce rate and tablet users are usually in the middle in this case.

One thing is clear from this, when a person uses the desktop, his concentration level is in one place and it does not fluctuate very much but when the same person uses a mobile, his concentration level starts fluctuating.

What is the good bounce rate for your website?

This is so tough to say the good bounce rate for your website or any website. I will tell you don’t run for a good bounce rate but run for a bounce rate which is lower than your nearby competitors.

For example,

If you are a blog website on food and drink industry where most of the traffic come from organic search with mobile device then your average bounce rate should be at least nearby 61.18%.

But why         

Blog websites average bounce rate 65-90% we can take middle as 77.5%

Food and drink industries average bounce rate 65.62%

Organic search traffic channel average bounce rate 43.60%

Traffic from mobile devices produce average bounce rate of 58%

So the average is (77.5+65.62+43.60+58) ÷ 4 = 61.18%

So if your bounce rate is 55% then it can be said that this is a good bonce rate for your site. If you can bring it lower then it will be better.

What is the average exit rate?

I can't find any industry level bench mark of exit rate like bounce rate bench mark.

Exit rate can occurred for many reasons. This is specifically website matter or your website’s internal matter.

One of friend’s website I have taken his website’s exit rate info.

Exit rate by device

Mobile users are 20% ahead compared to desktop users in terms of exit rate as well as bounce rate. I was surprised to find that his website has the lowest tendency to exit among tablet users but in terms of bounce rate we found it to be in the middle.

Exit rate by traffic channel

According to the data obtained from the traffic channel, the traffic from Google paid search has the lowest tendency to exit and is much less than the direct or organic traffic.

Is a high exit rate always bad?

A high exit rate is always not bad.

Suppose Visitors are coming to a specific page through visiting an amount of page of your website and then exiting. Now you have to define separately what is the problem with that page. It may be that there is no action to take after that page.

Like your Thank You page. This is a page where it is very normal to get 100% exit rate.

This can happen with other pages besides the Thank You page. It is very normal.

But it is a matter of tension if the visitor repeatedly exits from your payment page. Then you need to improve your payment page.

Again, you have written an article just for gathering knowledge without much interlinking. So in that page you can’t desire a low exit rate.

Create quality content

Everyone says content is the king, I say that too and it's true. The best way to reduce the bounce rate of a blog page is to create quality content.

If the content is compared to food then you and most of the people will eat at the hotel where good and quality food is served.

Even if you don't like the food, you may eat it for the first time because you have to pay a price but if your content is not of quality, the visitor will go back immediately because there is no fact of money.

Increase landing page conversion rate                  

Landing pages can be of different types such as sales landing pages, lead generating landing pages.

Conversion is the main target of any landing page. If there is no conversion, then the bounce rate will continue to increase one by one because there is usually no interaction point other than conversion on a landing page.

So to reduce the bounce rate of the landing page you have to increase its conversion rate so that visitor can interact with your site and can go to next page.

Increase page speed

You should know that page speed is the first experience for your visitors ever you make. If your site is slow then visitors leave your site immediately. So if you really want to decrease bounce rate you have increase your website speed.

One research of section.io has shown that every 100 ms of delay load time increase the loss of a company 1%. In this research amazon also has included.

If your website fully loaded in 2 seconds then your bounce rate will be increased 9.6% and for every extra 1 second load time your bounce rate will be increased by up to 5%.

If your website loading time is 7 second then your bounce rate will be increased about 32.3%.

Adjust bounce rate                              

This is a very effective way to reduce the bounce rate even though I don't use it.

You have to paste a script in your theme header which include your analytics id which will mention a specific time period. If someone views your site up to that time, Google Analytics will not count it as a bounce, even if there is no interaction.

Of course, if you do this, you will not understand how many visitors are actually exiting your page without interaction, so surely you will not be able to do anything to increase the interaction.

However, according to Google Analytics, it will reduce your bounce rate.

You will use your analytics id instead of “UA-XXXXXXX-1”. You can adjust the time period.

I have said I don’t use it but moz has used it and they've showed the difference after using this code.

Make your site is mobile and tablet optimized

There are 5.22 billion mobile users in the world today and you know mobile users are the most prone to bounce. If your website is not mobile friendly then immediately 40% of visitors start visiting your competitors’ sites.

So you can understand how many visitors you will miss if your website is not mobile optimized. One more thing you should know that each consumers spend about 3 hours in mobile per day.

Tablet users interact almost three times more than mobile users. If your site is not optimized, you will continue to receive bounces from users of this tablet.

Create a premium looking UI

For example, when you log in to a website, a spammy look appears. Do you have any desire to interact with that website now?

I don't think there will be and I won't have either.

You can't expect others to interact with your spammy website.

Keep a sidebar with less promotion

I see a lot of websites that are full of sidebar promotion rubbish.

Looking at these types of sites, it is clear that their purpose is not to help people or to provide accurate information, but to fill their own pockets by spamming.

Sidebars enhance the beauty of a site. But many like me think it disturbs the reader during reading the blog. So they use slide in sidebar like me.

So you can use a sidebar but use it very decently and focus how it helps visitor more.

If possible then use a slide in sidebar so that sidebar can’t be a distraction for viewers.

Keep a helpful search solution

This is especially important for ecommerce sites.

Many visitors leave immediately when they cannot search for the product they want.

For this reason an effective search bar should be used.

Usually most of the search bars sizes are 18 characters and that's fine.

This is especially important for ecommerce sites.

Many visitors leave immediately when the visitor cannot search for the product they want.

For this reason an effective search bar should be used.

Usually most of the search bars are 16 characters and that's fine.

Not only do you have to perfect the size of the search bar, you also have to see if it functions properly because the user did a search but the search engine returned completely irrelevant information. This will ruin user experience.

Offer chat help                          

I think it's a great idea to interact with visitors.

After landing on many websites I see a chat help is being offered.

As a result, many visitors who used to exit would like to get help through chat which will increase the interaction of people with your site and will reduce the bounce rate.

This will not only reduce your bounce rate but also help build a long distance relationship with visitors which will boost your site's purchase amount.

Off auto play

If you any music or video in your page then I will suggest don’t use auto play. This will be a very annoying thing for most of viewers.

I think you must have faced this annoying thing by visiting another websites as I.

Investigate your page

There will be no specific reason why the visitor bounces, but there will be some vital reasons that if you solve, you will be able to reduce most of your bounces.

In this case, if you can see what your site traffic is doing to your site, you can get an idea of what changes you need to make to reduce the bounce rate.

Heat map and session recording

A hit map is such a tool that lets you see where visitors how much have mouse-hovered on your page.

This will help you to understand where visitors are paying the most attention in your page.

Session recording is a tool that allows you to make video recordings of your page sessions.

You can see where did he take the mouse, where did he click, how long did he stay.

You can use Microsoft Clarity. This is a free tool dedicated for heat map and session recording.