Close to 3/4 of all businesses out there have websites. This means that creating a site online isn’t enough. You have to create an engaging site if you want to stand out in the 2020s.
But creating a website isn’t as easy as it seems. If your design isn’t just right, your website visits are going to turn into exits or bounces.
But what exactly is an exit? — and what is a bounce?
This article will walk you through the bounce rate vs. exit rate consideration. It will also teach you to reduce bounce, engage visitors, and cut down your exit rate.
A Bounce
A bounce is defined as a single page interaction with your website — usually with a time limit of 15 seconds. The idea behind a bounce rate is that someone finds your site, decides that they don’t like it, and “bounces” off like rubber. It’s further defined as a one-page interaction in which a person doesn’t do anything on a website.
Bounces are, of course, annoying. They turn the number of people who show up onto your website into a misleading figure. Can you really count the people who never did anything at all? — that’s like someone walking into your store, taking a look around, and leaving.
However, bounces are even worse than this. They’re toxic for SEO. Most search engines don’t just care about SEO keywords, but engagement.
This is because it’s search engines’ incentive to not just give people the most popular and relevant sites, but the best sites. What’s the point of recommending a site no one likes? A high bounce rate means search engines will mark you as a site that, unfortunately, people don’t like.
These interactions might seem cruel from a purely SEO-based perspective. However, think of the number of times you’ve clicked on a site, only to realize that it simply wasn’t what you came for.
Understanding the nature of bounces and bounce rates is key to improving yours.
An Exit
An exit is simpler than a bounce. It’s counted every time someone leaves your site.
However, an exit is when people leave a particular page as opposed to an exit from your site. It’s very common for one page on your site to have a significantly higher exit rate than the rest of your site.
High exits on one page aren’t necessarily a bad thing. For example, if you run a link-building site, and people are exiting on your “contact us” page, you’ve probably done your job pretty well.
However, if you’re an eCommerce site, and people head out on your inventory page without buying anything, you’re running into a problem.
Measuring exits is important in playing into your strengths and masking your weaknesses. You might even find that it’s best to cut a part of your website and focus on the parts that people particularly like.
Bounce Rate vs. Exit Rate
A bounce rate is a calculation of the number of people who leave after one interaction on your website. An exit rate is a calculation of the number of people who’ve left a particular page on your site.
Both of these metrics are important for understanding your website. However, you have to read them in different ways.
Bounce Rate
A high bounce rate is bad no matter how you look at it. It shows that people aren’t enjoying what they see on your site.
In order to decrease your bounce rate, you need to work on your site deeply. Talk to a website designer — they’ll help you get your aesthetics and written content in line. You should also work on creating dynamic headlines that immediately jump out at your customers.
However, it’s not always so straightforward. Sometimes, people jump off your site because they don’t feel that you’re offering enough depth or complexity. For this reason, we recommend writing articles that have 2,000 words or more every once in a while.
Exit Rate
As stated earlier, a high exit rate isn’t always bad. However, you want to make sure your exits are on pages that you’re converting to. If your exits are on your landing page, this is bad news — however, if your exits are on your target page, you’re doing something well.
Your exit rate should look like a pyramid. You should have the least amount of exits at the top when people first enter your website. However, the further they travel through your website (and down the pyramid), it’s acceptable for the exit rate to increase more and more.
To create your exit pyramid, you have to work on not just making your site interesting, but also making navigation to other parts of your website smooth.
Increase Your Conversions
At the end of the day, to improve both your bounce rate and your exit rate, you’re going to need to improve your conversions.
SEO is all about getting people to land on your page. That’s all well and good — people will never get interested in your products if they don’t discover you. However, people landing doesn’t mean much if they leave quickly.
This is where the process of conversions comes in.
Converting is all about turning people who land on your website into loyal customers. We don’t have the space here to go into what makes for a great conversion rate. However, check out this article on how to improve your website conversion rate.
Understand Bounce Rate vs. Exit Rate
Improving bounce rate and exit rate are both important. Understanding bounce rate vs. exit rate is important to knowing exactly what you should work on. If you want to improve you have to work on your conversions.
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