Exit Rate
The percentage of sessions that end on a specific page, calculated as page exits divided by total pageviews for that page, regardless of how many pages were viewed earlier in the session.
Exit rate and bounce rate are frequently confused, and the distinction matters for diagnosis. Bounce rate only counts sessions that start and end on the same page. Exit rate counts all sessions that end on a page — including multi-page sessions. This makes exit rate the correct metric for identifying where users are abandoning mid-funnel, while bounce rate is more relevant for evaluating single-page entry points.
Why Exit Rate Is the Funnel Metric You Need
Every page in a conversion funnel has an exit rate, and funnel health is largely a story of exit rates. A checkout flow with steps [Cart → Shipping → Payment → Review → Confirmation] should have low exit rates through Payment and Review, with the vast majority of exits happening naturally at Confirmation. When exit rates spike at Payment, that's the leak to fix. Bounce rate can't tell you this — it only measures entry pages.
High Exit Rates Are Not Always Problems
Like bounce rate, exit rate needs context. The last page of a completed transaction should have a high exit rate — users accomplished their goal and left. Blog posts that surface from search should have high exit rates if users got the answer they needed. The question is always: does the exit rate at this step align with user intent at that point in the journey?
Diagnosing Unexpected Exit Spikes
When exit rate spikes unexpectedly mid-funnel, the diagnostic checklist includes: form field errors or validation issues causing abandonment, trust signals absent at the moment of highest commitment, technical issues (slow page load, broken elements), required account creation causing friction, and price or shipping cost reveal creating sticker shock. Each is a different hypothesis, and session recordings filtered to exits on that specific page will typically surface the pattern within 20-30 sessions.