E-commerce bounce rates sound like a common problem to some. Customers visit your site, hang there for a few seconds, then all of the sudden bounce without visiting another site page.
Fortunately, there are several ways e-commerce sellers can lower their bounce rates and entice visitors to click on their site.
By learning some crucial tactics, online brands can boost their search engine optimization efforts and improve their bounce rates.
What is a Standard Rate for E-commerce Websites?
There is no blanket for a “good” bounce rate. Some sites may have bounce rates that go to 25%, while others might go up to 65%.
If a site’s bounce rate is 66% and above, then it will be worth knowing why those bounce rates are high in the first place.
For instance, does your marketing strategy deliver upon clicking through? Is your site visually welcoming, or is it hard to navigate?
As adjustments are made with these issues, monitor whether these changes are affecting your overall bounce rates. Rather than focusing on the bounce rate concerning an arbitrary ideal, it is more essential to focus on enhancing bounce rates in comparison to your site’s historical bounce rates.
In this post, we will talk about the 14 smart ways on how you can improve your ecommerce website’s bounce rates:
Improve Your Site’s Page Load Time
A site that loads slowly could be a bounce paradise. For every second it takes for your page to load, your conversions can significantly drop.
In fact, according to a study, slow loading sites have 72% higher bounce rates than quick loading sites. Moreover, a fast loading site also scores higher on search engine rankings.
Note that speed is always critical in reducing your bounce rate, and you should take the necessary steps to make yours a little bit faster. Follow Google’s practices on how you can improve your loading times.
Optimize Your Product Pages
Optimizing your product page should be one of your main priorities, especially if you’re an e-commerce brand. Why? It’s because this is the heart of the soul of your business.
Ensure that product images are clearly and accurately displayed, the add-to-cart functionality is quick and easy, and all reviews are visible.
Here are a couple of additional tips:
- Your page has to be branded
- Use whitespace
- Utilize stunning imagery
- Place an “Add to Cart” button that stands out
- Place the most important information at the top of your page
- Put other essential information like product specs and a sizing chart
Limit Distractions
First-time visitors would usually be greeted with a notice or some requests for permissions on their screen.
If you place a pop-up along with that notice, a chatbox, or some other element that gets in the way of the user navigating your page, then they’ll easily become annoyed.
If you place several ads, pop-ups, and flashing offerings on your page, then users will feel as if they’re walking straight into a physical store, and they’re greeted with pushy salespeople trying to sell them stuff.
That’s a major turn-off. The entire experience can be uncomfortable for them and will cause them to leave.
Create Easy Navigation
If you offer a wide array of products, ensure that all options are presented clearly and quickly.
Let’s say that your site sells shoes, t-shirts, and pants, yet you’re just showing shoes to your customers. They’ll easily get confused and just leave. Give them broad categories to choose from, and allow them to pick their path from there.
The items that you place in your menu should also be short, concise, and clear. Try to avoid using niche terms or lingos on your menu, as most of your first-time visitors may not be able to understand them. Moreover, it should describe the page that it’s linking to.
Sticky menus are also excellent for long pages. That way, users don’t have to scroll all the way from top to bottom just to access your main menu. On the other hand, users also expect to find your contact information, FAQs, and policies in the footer.
Finally, if your site contains complex information or pages, then consider adding breadcrumbs as these help users navigate your site easily. The same thing goes when they want to go back to where they were previously.
These also outline your site’s hierarchy to keep your visitors from getting lost.
Make Your Search Bar Prominent
One reason why e-commerce sites experience high bounce rates is that visitors are not able to find what they are looking for.
To combat this problem, make your search bar as prominent as possible. Ideally, your search box should be 27-character wide. However, most search bars are usually 18-character-wise on average.
While you can still type queries on short boxes, the thing is that portion of that query is only available for a short period of time. Reviewing or editing the same query can be difficult. So leverage whatever you can work on.
Display the Best Deals and Discounts
The moment visitors come to your site; you can play the urgency card so that your viewers will be instantly hooked.
One way you can engage prospective buyers on your homepage is to show the best deals and discounts on your banner.
Introduce a feeling of scarcity on your site. Limited time offers and discounts will instantly catch the user’s attention, and you would be doing yourself a great disservice if you do not use these to hook your visitors.
Make the Best Use of Your CTAs
If users are landing on your product pages, it’s important that they quickly identify the CTA button so that they could easily move on to the next stage of the funnel.
If you don’t have a clear CTA on your site, visitors won’t know what to do and will simply leave.
To boost your sales, you need to think of ways how your CTA could stand out from the backdrop.
Here are also a couple of things to keep in mind:
- Make your CTA clear and direct. It shouldn’t contain any misleading information and should provide your page with good visibility.
- Offer limited-time discounts. This works well for various online businesses. It’s also a good idea to aim your CTAs in other crucial areas on your site like blogs, targeting the needs and interests of customers.
- Add CTA on your blog posts. Your blog posts should also have links on additional content on your site, and that includes relevant product pages.
Implement Responsive Design
Visitors will be accessing your site through their laptops, smartphones, tablet, or sometimes a combination of these devices at various stages of the funnel.
Make sure that you’re using a responsive web design that will provide users with an optimal viewing experience across various browsers and devices. This also makes sure that your layout resizes, yet your images and texts don’t break.
You can head to Google Analytics and see how much traffic from mobile and tablet your website is getting. Furthermore, you should invest in a responsive design even if it’s just a small percentage of your total visitors. Why exactly? Because mobile is the way to go these days.
E-commerce sales coming from mobile devices is expected to grow to 54% of the total e-commerce sales by 2021. Not only a responsive site design is one of the best ways to reduce bounce rates in your site, but it will also help you boost your brand image as well.
Content Readability is Key
Lack of readability in your content will trigger users to leave your site. The thing is those large chunks of text will scare off your readers. So, you should avoid them.
Another thing that you need to consider is the formatting of your texts. Most blog sites have poor formatting, and over time, this leads to higher bounce rates.
Moreover, your content should be properly formatted that will be tailored for search engines. Ideally, you should break up content and post it in proper order.
Your title should be big and bold. You should also incorporate subtitles, bullet points, and short paragraphs to make your content easier to read and understand.
Offer a Live Chat Help
Implementing a live chat on your site helps reduce bounce rates and boosts your conversion rates.
Users are more satisfied if a site has a live chat option to help them with their queries and needs. Employing a well-trained customer service representative not only resolves a particular query of a prospect, but it also engages them until they are convinced that they are ready to make a purchase.
This effortlessly surpasses all sorts of marketing channels like telephone, email, and social media.
Use High-Quality Multimedia Content
The quality of your media that you show in your e-commerce site not only helps you sell more, but this also improves the user experience of your site.
High-quality images and videos add value to your site by boosting the conversion rate, as well as your average visit duration. Your e-commerce website works as a catalog, so it should be easy for users to browse through your products. More so if there is a high-quality media that supports them.
Sure, you can choose to buy professional photos from various stock photography sites. However, it would be advisable to hire a photographer to do product photography for your online store. This gives your brand a more personal, authentic touch.
Videos work pretty much the same way. You can use audio, music, colors, narration, and so many other different forms of persuasion tools out there. And even with a small budget, you can already make an effective video presentation when you hire a freelancer.
Good Design Instills Credibility
While the popular adage “Don’t judge a book by its cover” is true, it’s not the same thing when it comes to websites.
Your potential customers will judge your website based on how it looks. That’s precisely why you need to create an excellent first impression.
Remember that design plays a key role in influencing how others perceive something and whether or not they can deem your brand as credible.
Having a good site design will automatically ensure that people will take you seriously. On the other hand, a bad site design breeds distrust.
That’s precisely why you need to invest in a neat and uncluttered site design. You also need to be consistent when it comes to the font, layout, and colors of your website, as they’re extremely crucial.
Go After the Bounce
Now, despite all your efforts, there are some users who bounce off your website without checking out your other site pages. There are also some people that even if they didn’t bounce, won’t buy on their very first visit to your site.
The good news is, you can still reach out to these people through customized, remarketing ads based on the pages that they’ve visited.
If you have a high bounce rate, you can help minimize these efforts and its negative impact as you work out the ways to resolve your bounce rate.
Always Test
If you are not quite sure how your bounce rates will affect your site, or you want to make small changes to maximize impact, then you might want to do A/B or split testing.
Doing these kinds of tests let you send traffic on alternate versions of your site or a particular page. Then, it will send you data to your overall performance.
For instance, you might pick two variations of banner images at the top of your site. You can do a test run of it for a short period to see which of your banner is generating better results.
Over to You
No matter how much bounce rates your site receives, your target should be how you can consistently lower it.
Trying a couple of things on our list may be a great start. The idea here is reducing your bounce rates, as well as syncing it to your customers’ wants and needs.
If customers feel that their needs are being met on your e-commerce site, then they are more likely to stay on your site to shop.
Over time, a lower bounce rate will lead to more qualified website traffic and an increase in sales.
