Exit rate what is a good percentage?

[300m]

I use google Analytics and was wondering what a reasonable exit rate percentage was for a home page on a domain that receives a fair amount of traffic.

Would 40%, 30%, 20%, be a problem? I have been using analytics for a year now and just noticed on the site overlay section for my home page it has an exit rate percentage and would like to know what the average is, or is this one of those things where the average does not matter much? I would like to think that it matters greatly, but who knows.

I am just trying to get a feel for it as I always though my home page had a higher than normal exit ratio, but i guess that could also be related to my niche. Any thoughts would be most welcome.

Thank You

[Widestrides]

Mine is 61% and I am not at all happy about that. I also don't really believe it.

Anyone know what an average might be? Of course this would depend on the nature of the site. But some ballpark figure might help.

We used ClickTracks. Maybe there is something with their analysis. I read others who were concerned about their high rates and were using them.

What could be the explanation for a high exit rate from the home page? And it seems this does not include folks who came in from a sub domain page and then went to the home page and then exited.

The other thing that makes me suspicious of this figure is that our average number of page views is 3.

[independentcreator]

For one client with a high amount of traffic and lots of AdWords, I'm seeing about 33% exit rate. I believe this is very reasonable, but I should dig around in the data a bit more to see if bots are included in the stats, for example.

[plumsauce]

Good is relative.

What is important is understanding the basis.

For example, one of my associates has a site which is a subdomain of a world famous thumbnail gallery directory. There is a link from the home page. As a result his bounce rate is sky high from scrapers and bots blindly following every link on the page.

He pays the bandwidth bill anyways, because that link is still very profitable.

[ketan9]

For my site, I have exit rate of about 5-10% roughly. But for me the problem is I do not yet have enough traffic, I get about 50 uniques a day. That's why my stats may not be relevant.

[LorSor]

I'm at about 45% exit rate, but I've also just listed this site with Google AdWords and and still adjusting Y! PPC campaign. I'm guessing I have hits from folks who followed through on my sponsored listing, only to find our site wasn't what they wanted after all. I'm still tweeking the keywords we're bidding on and hope that this rate will decrease over time.

So, in order to determine what rate is "good", include in your reasonings where you are in your PPC ad campaign(s).

[Adam_T]

I generally set a 0 - 20% exit rate as ideal, unless of course there is a large amount of advertising traffic hitting it or other reasons such as this in which it may be over-inflated.

[cgrantski]

I think it depends on your marketing. Are people getting false expectations from your marketing? Or is your brand so vague that you are getting a lot of explorers with no expectatations? Are you marketing just to an in-house mailing list of previous customers? Or are you buying lists?

Does your home page provide enough information to help people decide whether to click further? If not, you can get a lot of people who do click further, but then leave as soon as they get clear information about you.

For everything above except the in-house mailing list, I've seen it as high as 78%. For carefully targeted marketing and a great home page, I've seen it go down to 17%. I'm talking about sites that sell many millions of $$ a year, not small sites.

[moose606]

My exit rate on home page is 41%, which is not bad, but still too high for me, as it means almost half don't find anything worth clicking on. Always tweaking home page layout to improve this stat.

[300m]

Thanks for the feedback.

Over the past year my exit rate is 45%.

"So, in order to determine what rate is "good", include in your reasonings where you are in your PPC ad campaign(s)."

For this particular domain I am not involved in any PPC. The stats are pure organic search.

"Are people getting false expectations from your marketing?"

No, its pretty straight forward.

"Or is your brand so vague that you are getting a lot of explorers with no expectatations?"

The brand would not be vague, but the keywords that are driving traffic might be somewhat vague.

"Are you marketing just to an in-house mailing list of previous customers? Or are you buying lists?"

This would not apply as the only traffic this domain receives is from search engines or sites that refer us by name.

I think that i might be able to lower the exit rate if my message was a bit more clear, but have concerns about changing it too much.

[cgrantski]

Think about taking your exit rate as it is and not trying to improve it. The extra visitors who don't buy at least saw your site and may come back. And if you make your ads too specific or clear, you will get a better exit rate because you lowered the number of visitors, not because you increased the number of sales. In fact, you could lower the number of visitors AND the number of sales.

All those non-converting visitors don't cost you anything, so take them as a gift.

Your bottom line should be the number of sales, not these proportions. The proportions matter (in a business sense) if you are paying for visits.

I'm saying --- take the time you would have spent on this particular issue and put it into getting more visitors or into making your landing page better so that more visitors buy something.