Thanks to tools like Google Analytics, you can not only check how many people visit your website, but also get detailed information about the source of the visit or its duration. In addition to these data, the indicators that you should pay attention to in this tool are the so-called bounce rate and exit rate. So, what are the main differences between them? Should a high failure rate and exit rate always be a cause for concern?

Failure rate and yield rate are not the same

These terms can be translated interchangeably as bounce rate and exit rate. At first glance, they may seem to refer to the same thing, so they indicate how many people left the site. However, there are differences between these factors and should not be confused with each other.

 Failure rate

Bounce rate can be checked, for example, in Google Analytics. This is a resource that informs how many visitors left the website without performing any other actions, such as clicking any link or other element of the site.

This is an important metric, but you should know that a high number is not always a cause for concern. For example, company blog posts often have a high bounce rate. If they answer the questions entered in the search engine and meet the expectations of users, they don't need to move on to the next entry. In this case, a high bounce rate shouldn't be a bad thing - the reader reads the content, gets an answer, and leaves the page. You should also analyze other data, such as time spent on the website.

However, a high bounce rate on a home or landing page can already be a cause for concern. This indicates that many users find, for example, an e-commerce site, see products, categories and other elements of the site, but do not click on any of them. Again, you should analyze other information, such as the source of the visit or what keywords brought the user to the page. If these are "accidental" visits, a high bounce rate is natural.

Output speed

If an online store customer visits the website, enters the categories, clicks on the selected products, and then leaves the page, we refer to the exit rate. Therefore, it is a factor that determines how many users left a particular page but previously visited several others.

A high exit rate does not always indicate a more serious problem. Let's say that a customer has been sent an ad on a landing page that encourages them to download a file or subscribe to a newsletter. After that, he is transferred to the next page. If the last site has a high exit rate, this is again quite natural.

The same thing happens with articles divided into several pages - if the last page has a high exit rate, it means that the user left our site but read the entire text beforehand.