The 'high bounce' page that was doing its job

The 'high bounce' page that was doing its job

An analyst flagged a support FAQ page for an 78% bounce rate and queued it for a redesign. The wrong metric had condemned it.

Bounce rate counts sessions that start and end on a page. Exit rate counts where sessions end regardless of where they began. The clue: this FAQ was rarely an entry point, so bounce was nearly irrelevant to how it actually performed.

The change: we judged it by exit rate in-context and by whether visitors stopped opening support tickets after reading it.

Its in-session exit rate was a healthy 31%, and ticket volume on that topic had dropped 26% since the page launched. It was deflecting tickets, exactly its purpose.

Bounce rate is about entrances. Exit rate is about journeys. Judge a mid-funnel page by bounce and you'll redesign something that was quietly winning. The page didn't need fixing, the metric choice did.