Autochat TeamAs a business owner, you don’t want visitors to leave your website without buying anything. However, there will always be visitors who don’t buy from you. That’s bad news.
But, there’s good news too.
If you understand why and when your website visitors leave, then you can plug the exodus, a.k.a, your exit rate.
Let’s start with understanding what exit rate is.
Here’s one scenario that explains exit rate.
Kyle is 33 years old, and he wants to buy a cool new laptop sleeve for his brand new MacBook Pro.
He’s been on 4 shopping sites, spent a lot of time on each site trying to find the right sleeve, but hasn’t been able to find one.
Now, Kyle has been spending a lot of time on these sites and has left without buying anything.
Each of the 4 websites he visited and left without making a purchase can count Kyle as an exit rate statistic.
When you look back at your site’s analytics, if you find visitors spending time on your website exploring more than one page, and eventually leave without making a purchase, is what’s called your exit rate.
Hang on! But, what’s the bounce rate, then?
Bounce rate is when your site visitors land on one of your pages and exit without viewing a second page.
PRO TIP: To check the exit rate in Google Analytics, go to Behavior – Site Content – All Pages.
1 – Exit Rate – Autochat – Hotjar
You can also download the Google Chrome extension for web page analytics here.
How do you calculate your exit rate?
An exit is the metric referring to the number of times visitors have left a site from a single page.
The page’s exit rate indicates how often visitors exit from it after visiting any number of pages on your site; as a percentage, exit rate is calculated as the number of exits / number of pageviews for a particular page.
2 – Formula – Autochat – CXL_com
For example, a visitor lands on your homepage, navigates to a category page, then to a product page, and leaves. That’s an exit on the product page.
The overall exit rate for the product page is then calculated as number of exits / number of pageviews the product page received.
3 – Exits from page – Autochat
Here’s an example.
Let’s say one of your product pages has received a total views of 500 visitors.
And out of these 500 visitors, 450 of them have exited without taking any action.
So, this brings your exit rate to 450/500 = 0.9.
There isn’t an industry average to compare your exit rates against, because exit rates are purely specific to your website.
Simply put, if your exit rate is closer to 1.0 (a scenario where most or every visitor exits without making a purchase), then you need to understand and convert more visitors to sales.
PRO TIP: To see exit rate in Google Analytics, visit Behavior > Site Content > All Pages and look at each page’s % Exit number.
What’s in this blog post guide?
By the end of this blog post, you will have a thorough understanding of why shoppers exit and be confident to implement the best exit intent strategies.
Why do shoppers exit without making a purchase?
There are quite a few reasons why people would spend a lot of time without taking any meaningful action (purchasing) at the end.
We believe that there are three reasons why your exit rates might be high.
- Exits due to technical issues
- Exits due to strategic issues
- Exits due to neutral issues
Technical issues are where your site’s mobile shopping experience is not up to the mark, or there isn’t enough information to help shoppers make a decision, or the overall website performance might need a significant improvement.
Strategic issues can be reasons that affect your shoppers decision, such as high shipping costs, surprise costs, or lack of product information.
Neutral issues are situations where nothing is at your fault, but still shoppers tend to exit your site without making a transaction. Window shopping, comparison shopping, or research shopping are some examples.
While fixing technical issues should be your priority to offer an awesome shopping experience on any device, strategic issues also need your attention, and we shall help you set up exit pop up strategies in this blog post. There isn’t much you can do to fix neutral issues because some of your visitors will leave without making a purchase.
Read our blog on ‘Cart Abandonment’ to understand why shoppers fail to checkout and what you can do to fix this.
On a strategic level, exit intent pop ups can help you bring your exit rates down. Let us see how this is possible. Before we look into strategies, let’s answer this question.
Do exit-intent popups convert well?
Let us put this out straight away. Exit intent pop ups are your last resort. Here’s why.
You also need to remember that exit pop ups are a backup to your web pages. As soon as a user sees these things, your page – and the sales funnel surrounding it – has failed. You want the vast majority of visitors to never even see your exit-intent popup because your site is so well optimized for conversions that most people never make it that far.
On average, exit popups convert at around 4% – 5%. Such a conversion rate might not seem big but consider this: it’s higher than display ads and landing pages.
The good thing about exit pop ups is that they don’t interrupt the visitor’s navigation and don’t have any negative impact on the user experience.
The average CTR across all website ad formats and placements is 0.05% only.
Some formats like the sidebar banner might generate a slightly higher result but overall, these conversions are far from ideal.
What’s more, those best performing pop ups have a few things in common.
Let’s go through them now.
1. The offer made through an exit pop up is relevant
To convert shoppers to sales, you need to provide the right incentive to provoke shoppers to part with their hard-earned money and buy one of your products.
When the offer is just right, it can move people to take any action. You see, at the end of the day, shoppers want the best value for their money, if your offer delivers this, then you have a high chance of converting exits into sales.
Here’s what you do: ensure that your offer addresses your shoppers’ immediate need or want. And the offer is immediately realized, not later.
4 – Exit popup – Autochat – Tribulent
2. The exit pop up headline is easy to understand
As shoppers’ attention span is really short, you get to communicate the crux of your offer through a very simple, easily understandable headline.
Remember, you are trying to hold on to shoppers who have decided to leave your site. When shoppers are adamant, make your communication relevant and simple.
Here’s what you do: choose conversational, commonly used words and phrases to convey your offer.
5 – Popup headline – Autochat – Conversion Fanatics
3. A clear, simple offer copy, right below the headline
If your headline is good, you buy an extra few seconds from shoppers. These extra seconds are spent on reading your explainer copy.
The explainer copy needs to achieve two things:
- Reassure the offer made in the headline
- Tell shoppers what they should do to get the offer
Here’s what you should do: the explainer copy should be no more than a couple of sentences that guide the shopper to the call to action.
6 – Popup copy – Autochat – Conversion Fanatics
4. Great exit pop ups highlight social proofs
The headline and explainer copy will do a good job in communicating the offer and guiding shoppers to take action. However, most shoppers remain skeptical about last-minute discounts and you might want to use social proof to convince these skeptical shoppers.
Here’s what you do: you may highlight the number of people who have accepted this offer. This proof helps shoppers build trust with the offer you have made.
5. A compelling Call to Action
Now that your exit pop up’s headline and explainer copy have done the convincing, the call to action should close the deal quickly.
In short, a call to action is supposed to tell a person what to do to get the offer and motivate them to do so.
Here’s what you do: create effective calls to action that includes an active verb describing the exact action a shopper should take.
7 – Popup CTA – Autochat – Conversion Fanatics
6. Exit pop ups are optimized for mobile devices
Today more shopping is done on mobile devices than ever before. As a result, your exit pop up campaigns need to get it right on mobile devices.
Mobile pop ups convert much better than desktop ones.
Here’s what you do: get your website optimized for mobile devices, run multiple exit intent campaigns to see what works best on your mobile site.
8 – Mobile popup – Autochat – Search Engine Journal
PRO TIP: You see, the best pop ups perform well if the timing of the pop up is right. Trigger it too soon, and you will irritate shoppers, and if you trigger it too late, the shopper would have already clicked on the browser exit button.
How to choose the best exit pop-up app for your Shopify store?
At a fundamental level, a very good exit intent pop app generator should accomplish these four things.
Should be easy to use: the pop up app you choose should be easy to work with. From installation to configuring pop ups, the app should allow you to do all this without a complicated learning curve.
Should be versatile: the exit intent pop up app you choose should let you launch campaigns on both your desktop site and mobile site. You should be able to customize the design, copy, and call to action of your exit pop ups with ease.
Should allow you to do A/B testing: since exit intent pop up is a strategic move to convert shoppers to sales, the app you choose should allow you to conduct testing of a variety of pop ups. This feature will help you figure out the best strategy in the long run.
Should offer granular analytics: exit pop ups are triggered by shopper’s mouse movements on your site. An app that allows you to track and analyze this should do you good. Besides, access to detailed analysis on your exit intent campaigns is a must while choosing an app.
Top 4 exit pop-up apps on Shopify
Cross sell for Shopify: here’s an app that helps you set up a variety of cross sell and upsell exit pop ups and convert shoppers to sales. And this app gives you the ability to create a unique experience for every visitor by treating them individually.
Exit intent by OptiMonk for Shopify: this app allows you to create 3 types of pop ups, a) the usual cart abandonment pop ups, b) upselling pop ups ideal to increase your average order value, and c) pop ups to grow your email subscribers.
Smart pop up for Shopify: this app has all the usual bells and whistles and offers you A/B testing features as well. It also allows you to display coupon popup windows based on customers’ exit intent, time-on-site or scroll behavior.
Upsell Popup for Shopify: a mobile-friendly pop up builder, this app gives you design freedom and triggers a wide variety of pop ups.
Is there something better than exit intent pop ups?
By now, we have understood that exit intent pop ups are one of the many strategies to boost your sales conversions. Is there a better strategy than exit intent pop ups that can help you convert better?
Okay! Let us ask a few questions.
- What if you need not wait for shoppers to leave your site, and then trigger exit pop ups to save them?
- What if you could see every shopper on your site in real-time and communicate with them immediately? And influence them to make the purchase.
- What if you could do all this through a single app on Shopify? Is it possible?
The answer is yes!
The Autochat app helps you become a proactive seller. Meaning, you can engage your shoppers LIVE and influence them well before you need exit pop ups to bail you out. And Autochat isn’t a one-trick-pony, there’s much more to this. Visit www.autochat.io to learn more.
Final thoughts
Plugging your exit rates using exit intent pop ups is just one step to turn your business into a constant success. There are so many other challenges that need creative solutions.
This is why we founded Autochat. Our passion is to empower entrepreneurs in the ecommerce domain. Like you.
This has led us to create a repository of actionable content to help you make informed decisions and remove friction in:
- achieving tremendous scale in your business
- and scale your customer service speed, accuracy, and quality
Do bookmark our blog and subscribe to our newsletter for well researched, informative, and actionable content each week.
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