Why bounce and exit rates should be addressed seperately

[Ali-v-8]

Someone asked what's the difference between bounce and exit rates. After explaining I received a number of queries that I feel I should share.

Why is bounce rate important?
A bounce rate means that traffic you have worked hard to gain is leaving straight away.

There could be a number of causes.
1) Wrong Landing page.
2) Bad web design.
3) Accidental click.
4) Wrong product.
Some percentage of a bounce rate cannot be avoided, but remember that a person leaving a website is harder to retain (making repeat visit) than a fresh visitor.

Why is exit rate more important?
If a visitor is spending time to look around, they are in that buying mode. The visitor is determined to find what they are looking for. Checking analytics to figure out why they left is important (IMO) because they took the time to browse.

Common causes.
1) Bad navigation/web design (hard to find the product they want).
2) Price (competition determines this, so it may be unavoidable).
3) Bad images.
4) Bad descriptions.

Please feel free to add to this list.

[fisicx]

Can't add to the list but there are 4 main groups of visitor:

Yes
Maybe Yes
Maybe No
No.



The Yes group are always going to buy no matter how bad your site/product/service.
The Maybe Yes group are less likely to bounce but probably exit.
The Maybe No group may bounce but might follow few links before exiting.
The No group are never going to buy.

The target group is therefore the the Maybe Yes bunch.

This is where Ali's list comes in. You need to be pouring over the stats to see: where they came from, where they landed, where they went and most importantly where the left (as Ali says).

If you can keep more of the Maybe Yesses your conversion rate will improve. Keep tweaking and you might even convert some of the Maybe Noes.

[sirearl]

Another reason for high bounce rates is when you are using a site to capture traffic for the purpose of sending that traffic to another of your sites or elsewhere.

I.E quite common to have a shop on a different domain.

Earl

[FireFleur]

Some percentage of a bounce rate cannot be avoided, but remember that a person leaving a website is harder to retain (making repeat visit) than a fresh visitor.


Wouldn't take that assumption as gospel, I will often open 5 or so sites, check out one, get busy with something else and get a new browsing session. I don't make a mental note not to visit a site again, and I will often see the logo of all the open ones, and may even search on the brand later because of it.

[fisicx]

Yes but if you are looking for widgets and the landing page is full of widget holders there is far less incentive to stay. As I said in my post there will always be a percentace of NO visitors. The trick is to get that percentace down, reduce the bounce rate which will give you a higher proportion of YES and MAYBE YES visitors.