Exit rate measures how often a page was the last one viewed in a session, as a share of all views of that page. Every session ends somewhere, so exits are not bad in themselves: a visitor who read the answer they needed and left is a success. Exit rate becomes useful on pages that are supposed to move people on, such as pricing, a signup step or a product page, where a high rate points to where the journey breaks. In GA4, Exits is available as a metric in Explorations, and exit rate is calculated as exits divided by views.
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Exit rate versus bounce rate
Bounce rate looks at sessions that started on a page and were not engaged. Exit rate looks at every view of a page, wherever the session started, and asks whether it was the last. A pricing page might have a low bounce rate, because people arrive from other pages, and still a high exit rate, because that is where they stop.
Using it well
- Compare pages of the same type rather than the whole site
- Focus on steps in a path: pricing, demo request, signup, checkout
- Pair it with a funnel exploration to see where people go instead
- Check whether exits are actually conversions handled on another domain, such as a booking tool
Example
Where demo interest stopped
A fictional analytics product, Tallyroot, sees that its pricing page has a much higher exit rate than its product pages. A session recording review shows visitors looking for whether there is a free plan, which the page only mentions in a footnote. Making the free tier visible in the plan table gives them a next step.
Common mistakes
Trying to lower exit rate on every page
Blog posts and help articles are natural end points. Focus on pages with a job to move people on.
Missing cross-domain journeys
If signup or booking happens on another domain without cross-domain tracking, those exits may be your conversions.
Frequently Asked Questions
GA4 offers Exits as a metric in Explorations. Exit rate is not a default report metric, but you can calculate it as exits divided by views.
There is no general benchmark. Compare a page with similar pages on your own site and with its own history.
Keep reading
- Bounce rate: Bounce rate is the share of sessions where the visitor did not engage. GA4 defines it as the inverse of engagement rate, unlike the old single-page definition.
- Funnel analysis: Funnel analysis measures how many users move through each step of a defined sequence, such as visit, pricing, sign-up, and where they drop off.
- GA4 Explorations: GA4 Explorations are custom analysis reports for funnels, paths, segments and cohorts that go beyond GA4's standard reports.
- Engagement rate: Engagement rate is the share of sessions that were engaged sessions. In GA4 it is engaged sessions divided by total sessions, the inverse of bounce rate.
- Active user: An active user is a person GA4 counts as having engaged with your site or app in a period. It is the default user metric in most GA4 reports.
- Analytics event: An analytics event is a recorded interaction, such as a page view, click, sign-up or download. In GA4 every interaction is stored as an event with parameters.
- Annotation: An annotation is a dated note on an analytics chart that records an event, such as a release, tracking change or algorithm update, so trends are read correctly.
- Average engagement time: Average engagement time is how long a page or app was in the foreground for users, on average. GA4 reports it per active user and per session.
