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When looking at the behavior flow report for my starting page I can see it has 50.1K sessions and 35.9K drop-offs (i.e. 71.7%) but when looking at the exit rate for the same page it is only 57.0%, corresponding to 86.3K exits and I'm trying to understand the story behind these numbers. Can the lower exit rate be explained by that the starting page has been re-visited by a lot of users which increases the pageviews and thus decreases the exit rate? Regarding how the number of exits can be greater than the number of drop-offs can perhaps be explained by visitors who have reached the starting page from another page on my site and then made an exit. That would count as an exit but not show as a drop-off in the behavior flow right? Are there any other situations that could explain the difference between drop-offs and exits? For example are there cases when a drop-off does not mean that the user left the site? I know that is the case for goal funnel reports but what about the behavior flow report?

Note: In the behavior flow report I used dimension Source and the flow shows Starting pages --> 1st interaction --> 2nd interaction et.c.

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First of all, remember that Flow reports are sampled after 100K sessions

Be aware that in Flow reports you don't see particular page, but set of pages (starting with URL; some of them could be one-page-group)

Drop off rate is calculated by dividing exits over "entrances" (unique pageviews as an X-interaction)

Exit rate means: exits / (total pageviews + total screenviews)

Regarding how the number of exits can be greater than the number of drop-offs can perhaps be explained by visitors who have reached the starting page from another page on my site and then made an exit. That would count as an exit but not show as a drop-off in the behavior flow right?

It will be a drop off too. But not on "starting pages" stage.

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  • When you say "It will be a drop off too. But not on "starting pages" stage." Do I understand you correctly that you mean that it will show as a drop-off from the starting page but not in the "starting pages" step in the flow report but rather from the 3rd interaction?
    – Alex
    Apr 9, 2015 at 8:23
  • Yes, that's what I mean Apr 9, 2015 at 10:30

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