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Masooma Memon on February 7, 2022 (last modified on February 1, 2022) • 13 minute read
If you didnât already know, there are a ton of insights you can learn from your Google Analytics’ exit pages.
From identifying what interests your target audience to figuring out culprits that are pushing people to leave your site, studying your exit rate is a must.
Not sure where to start and what exactly you can learn? Weâve got the answer for you as we dive into:
Exit pages are pages your site visitors view last and leave from.
For example, if a user is reading your blog content and visits a product page on your site after that but leaves your site from there, your exit page is the product page.
But whatâs the average exit rate? We asked our contributors the same and concluded that the average exit rate is 26-40% for about 44% of our contributors.
For 15%, itâs between under 25% and 41-55% each. For 10%, itâs 56-70% with only 55 saying their exit rate on average is over 70%.
To find out which pages your users are exiting from, head to Google Analytics and the menu on the left.
From there, select Behavior, followed by Site Content. Now select Exit Pages.
You can also get a dayâs, a weekâs, and a monthâs overview by changing the setting from the graphâs upper right corner.
Now for exactly what you can learn:
Call to action messages are only as effective as their relevancy. Meaning: not only should the message be uber-relevant to the page but it should also be positioned in a spot where the reader is ready to take action.
For example, if you place a CTA before making a case for your product feature, itâs likely to go to waste. Similarly, if you add it where your reader isnât likely to see it, youâll miss an opportunity to convert them.
However, finding the ideal position for CTAs can be tricky. Luckily, itâs where Google Analytics’ exit pagesâ insights come in handy. Numlookerâs Lynda Fairly, in particular, has found success with it.
âExit page analysis helped me understand the problems that my website has, but most importantly, it helped me understand where should I add the most CTAs.â
âFor example, there were exit pages with a good average session duration on those pages,â says Fairly. âAs people were exiting from such pages after several times of reading, our team decided to add action elements like buttons and live chat option.â
The result, you ask? âIt helped us improve our conversion a lot. For the lengthy pages, we added a few CTAs in the form of hyperlinks too. It worked pretty well.â
Not only do Google Analytics’ exit page insights help you identify spots to add your CTAs to, but thery’re also a good indicator of whether your message itself is effective.
The Mobitrix team, for instance, learned that âGetting to usersâ pain points in interactions, rather than focusing on the product itself, was the most important insight I gained by identifying and analyzing our exit pages,â writes Jonathan Tian.
âFor example, we recognized that our call to actions were too commercial, leading 30% visitors to exit directly upon getting to this part.â
Their reaction? âWe adjusted our tone in CTAs to make it more resonating to usersâ key needs, rather than endlessly depicting how amazing our product is.â
âThis move simplified the checkout process and enhanced the number of clients using our services,â Tian explains. âWe were also able to capture our leads by increasing exit-intent pop-ups to add figures to our email list. These actions boosted the number of our conversations with prospects.â
In short, remember to focus on the reader, not your product. Always ask yourself: whatâs in it for the user â not whatâs in it for me. Itâs only when your readers see the benefit in your CTA message that theyâre likely to click and convert.
Related: How to Write a Call to Action: Increase Your Conversions with 16 Proven Tips for Crafting CTAs
To add, studying the exit pagesâ report can help you see if you need a new CTA to nurture â not convert a visitor.
Netpaths Designâs Cayley Vos, for example, admits they added a CTA with âa special offer in exchange for an email submitâ to add potential buyers to their pipeline.
Related: B2C Lead Generation Strategy: Key Differences and Best Approaches
Vos adds, âWe found out that people were leaving the product pages and on an e-commerce site. The reason was price comparison with other websites. So we made the âsave for laterâ button prominent on the page.â
Together this new site feature and CTA has helped them generate a â15% boost in purchases, with no increase in traffic.â
Although studying your exit pages doesnât give you one answer but you can tweak a couple of things about your content (one by one) to understand whatâs a hindrance or vice versa.
A few things that might be pushing all your content efforts down the drain include:
Interestingly, fixing readability has a significant impact on improving your exit rate as 80% of our respondents agree.
77% say itâs also essential to match content with user intent and 75% suggest improving page load time is essential. On the same note, approximately 60%, 55%, and 50% say using compelling CTAs, optimizing for mobile, and improving internal linking structure helps.
Others recommend removing popups and ads, adding related posts sections, ensuring cross-browser compatibility, and more.
Case in point: the Enventys Partnersâ team learned their content wasnât conversational enough. Says Roy Morejon: âThe most important insight we gained by analyzing our exit pages was that we learned we needed to make our content more conversational, and less intellectual.â
âScholarly language serves a purpose and isnât always bad, but on a site where youâre trying to engage potential clients, the content often should trend more conversational,â Morejon observes.
âLanguage is important, and we realized we didnât sound as authentic as we could, so we reworked our content a bit.â
Keep in mind: the ideal tone or brand voice for you is one that speaks directly to your target persona. This means if youâre lacking in this department, you need to go back to audience research to come to grips with your audience profile.
Want a quick, try-today tip? Hop on a call with your customers and pay attention to the words they use and the way they describe your brand. Use those words in your marketing copy.
Sure, there are dozens (and dozens?) more GA metrics you could track. But, starting with these 10 commonly tracked GA metrics will give you a pretty high-level view of how your marketing is working…
If you want to track these in Google Analytics, you might find the visualizations limiting. Itâs also a bit time-consuming to combine all the metrics you need in one view.
To better understand how your website performs in terms of traffic growth and conversions, weâve made this plug-and-play dashboard that contains all the essential metrics for understanding how successful you are at optimizing different aspects of your website.
This Google Analytics dashboard offers a complete view of how your website is performing and converting at-a-glance and helps you gain valuable insights such as:
And more…
You can easily set it up in just a few clicks – no coding required.
To set up the dashboard, follow these 3 simple steps:
Step 1: Get the template
Step 2: Connect your Google Analytics account with Databox.
Step 3: Watch your dashboard populate in seconds.
âOne of the most important insights we gained from analyzing a page on our site with high exit rates was the discovery of features that were causing things to load poorly,â comments Stephen Light of Nolah Mattress.
âWe hadnât noticed that a crucial infographic was loading incorrectly on the page, meaning that it was hindering our audience from gaining the valuable content they needed,â shares Light. âA simple fix and the exit rates for that page were back in the normal % range.â
Castosâ Craig Hewitt made a similar finding. âOur analytics showed us that three of our blog posts had above 60 percent bounce rates. After investigating the situation, we realized that these pages were loaded with high-resolution images which were taking too long to load.â
âVisitors were simply getting frustrated and exiting our site instead of waiting,â Hewitt explains.
âOur solution was to compress our images. We also used a CDN (content delivery network) that gave us access to multiple data centers around the world to speed up our image loading speeds. These two steps reduced the bounce rates of our blog posts to below 40%.â
To save yourself from the same trouble, make sure you optimize all images you upload using a plugin like TinyPNG.com. This way, the image file size goes down and your visuals and pages load fast.
Related: 15 Website Speed Optimization Tips That Anyone Can Implement
By combining analyzing exit page report with bounce rate and session duration, you can optimize your site also.
In fact, this isnât something to brush under the rug as our contributors say poor website performance is the leading cause behind unwanted exit rates. This is followed by poor quality content and poor SEO.
Biking Know Howâs Rohan Kadam shares, âIn my opinion, the exit pages report helps me understand underperforming pages within my website architecture.â
âBy clubbing the Exit Pages report with Bounce Rate and Session Duration, I get a better understanding of pages that have high bounce rates, low session duration, and an increased number of exits.â
âUsually, such pages either need improvements or need to be 404âed,â suggests Kadam. âHaving a good website architecture is very important to SEO success, and the Exit Pages report helps to understand and improve the overall website architecture.â
Kadam isnât alone in cross-referencing exit rates with bounce rates though. 80% of our respondents do the same.
Speaking of optimizing sites, your eCommerce store can use some help from the Google Analytics’ exit pages suggests FragranceX team.
Leanna Serras notes, âWe run an eCommerce perfume store. We noticed that the product pages for one of our perfumesâ lines kept appearing in our exit pages.â
âAfter conducting an analysis, we realized that people were leaving these pages because they didnât have the information they needed to make a purchase,â Seeras elaborates.
âBy conducting some A/B testing we found that our customers wanted more detailed descriptions of the perfumes including some suggestions on how to wear them. After making the appropriate changes these product pages no longer appeared in our exit pages.â
Want to grow your product pagesâ conversion rate? Try this:
Related: 23 Ways to Improve Your Landing Page Conversion Rates
âA key insight we have gained from identifying and analyzing our exit pages is the amount of time spent by visitors,â notes Sergey Nikonenko of Purrweb.
âIt gives us an idea about the visitorâs interest and how long they stay on the particular page of our website. If they donât navigate or stay on the website and exit immediately, it could be several reasons such as poor visuals, slow speed, outdated content, etc.â
Nikonenko continues: âAfter analyzing our exit pages, we have found that customers frequently exit after spending a long time on a specific page; page content can be the issue.â
âWe have solved this problem by ensuring that our website content is informative, engaging, relevant, and useful to the visitors. Our marketing team fixed the broken links and encouraged the customers not to leave the site but rather to make an order and then leave. Conversion optimization techniques have helped us to improve our exit rate.â
Put simply, use Google Analytics’ exit pagesâ insights to identify how engaging your page is to your audience. After studying several reports, youâll start seeing patterns in visitorsâ interests. For example, a particular topic/content category on your blog might be succeeding at engaging your audience.
Watch the video below and learn how to properly track how effective your landing pages are at converting visitors to contacts.Â
From studying your audienceâs interests to optimizing your site, thereâs a lot that you can do by analyzing Google Analytics’ exit pages.
Want a shortcut to studying your Google Analytics metrics effectively? Create a Databox dashboard that shows all the essential metrics including bounce rate and session duration on one screen.
All you have to do is to plug in your GA into Databox. From there, the tool will display important metrics in real-time to keep you updated round the clock â without putting in any extra work.
Not just that but you can share the clutter-free, easy to study screen with your team. This way, you can all easily identify whatâs working and what needs work.
Want to start today? Sign up for Databox for free now and start improving your conversion rate.
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