Engagement metrics help you understand how visitors interact with your site beyond just loading it. These signals reveal how effectively your content captures attention, encourages interaction, and keep users involved.
What is early exit rate?
Early exit rate measures the percentage of sessions where users leave the site before the page fully loads. It highlights abandonment that occurs not because of the content - but because the content never had a chance to be seen.
How is it measured?
This metric tracks sessions where the user initiates a pageview but exits before the browser finishes loading and rendering the content. These exits often happen within the first few seconds and are flagged using real-user monitoring signals such as connection timing, user cancellations, or interrupted navigation events. The early exit rate is calculated as: (early exits ÷ total sessions) × 100.
Why it matters?
Early exits are almost always tied to performance problems. Users today expect pages to load instantly, and even brief delays - caused by slow servers, heavy scripts, or poor mobile optimization - can lead to abandonment before the page even appears. A high early exit rate signals urgent performance issues that impact engagement, retention, and revenue. Reducing this rate means your content gets seen - and your user has a chance to engage.