Exit Pages at Your Web Site

Do you know which are the most popular exit pages on your site?

Perhaps a better question: do you know what exit pages are?

An exit page is the last page requested by a site visitor. While none of us like to see site visitors leave, at a certain point they have to get back to work, put out the fire in the kitchen, or raise their children.

What we as site owners want is for visitors to leave a little piece of themselves behind: an email address, a completed contact form, a lock of hair, whatever. However, as people peruse our site, some of them will just vanish, leaving behind no trace. This is perhaps because we haven't given them a persuasive enough argument to give us a call, complete a registration form, subscribe to our newsletter, or whatever action we were hoping they would take.

Many traffic report programs will tell you which are your most "popular" exit pages are...in other words, which pages were least persuasive in keeping visitors at your site.

The best exit pages are pages that are designed to be exit pages, such as a "thank you" page after a contact form has been completed. However, if your most popular exit page is your home page, you should probably review it to determine why it's such a sieve.

• Does it offer mediocre copywriting?
• Does it leave visitors guessing as to what their next step (or click) should be?
• Is it confusing, dull, slow-to-load or overly-long?

Review your traffic reports to find the most popular exit page on your site and revamp it. Revisit your stats in a month and see if that page still is driving people away from your site. Try a new strategy if it still ranks high, or attack another problem page if you've fixed this one.

Rich Brooks
Master of the No-Exit Strategy

Comments

[anthony]

I have a new site ( active for about 30 days. My unique visitos went from less then 100 at the end of January to over 1000 daily by the end of Feb. About 100/day exit from my shop. My orders are about the same as with 100 visitors ( 1 to 2 determined purchasers daily). Is my shop ( or basket)discouraging my potential customers? Or is this normal ratio. Any info or advice would be appreciated.