How to Improve Bounce Rate for an eCommerce Website
Your website conversion rate is low because majority of visitors come and leave your website without taking any action (likely making a purchase in case of eCommerce website). Here we will see, how can you improve bounce rate for your eCommerce website.
After launching store online, almost all website owners have only one question in their mind, Why is my website conversion rate so low?
Instead they should have question “Why is my bounce rate so high?“
Let’s have a look at Bounce Rate in detail:
“Bounce Rate” – Definition and Actual Mean
In Google Analytics, A visit to a page is considered a bounce only if the visitor leaves directly from the entrance page, without viewing any other pages. This is slightly inaccurate.
If you are simply looking at the Google Analytics matrices, you are missing important aspect of the calculation. A page-view is going to be the most common second interaction on the bulk of websites, but there are a handful of other possible interactions—events*, transactions, and so on— that also affect bounce rate.
What is Good Bounce Rate?
Bounce rates from 25% to 30% are most likely as low as you’ll see them with everything working correctly. A bounce rate below 20% or over 90% is usually a bad sign.
Average bounce rates can vary depending on the industry you’re in:
- Informational sites: the average bounce rate is 40-60%
- Blogs: the average bounce rate is 70-98%
- Lead generation websites: the average bounce rate is 30-50%
- Service sites: the average bounce rate is 10-30%
- Retail sites: the average bounce rate is 20-40%
- Landing pages: the average bounce rate is 70-90%
How Bounce Rates Calculated?
The average bounce rate of a web page is calculated by dividing the total number of bounces on a page in a set period of time by the total number of entrances on that page in the same time window. Average bounce rate is determined by dividing the total number of bounces across all the pages in a set period of time by the total number of entrances across all the pages in the same period of time.
Reasons Behind High Bounce Rates
There are 3 common reasons why customers leave your website without any action:
1) Customer did not found what he was looking for
This probably happen due to incorrect keyword promotion. Using such keywords you can achieve the ranking in Google and successfully get traffic but it affect the health of your bounce rate calculation.
2) They found what they were looking for but did not meet the expectation
This is the most common reason for eCommerce sites where customers leave website without any action. This can happen by various reason like cost of the product, unexpected charges, discount code expired etc. You should work closely to each step and points mentioned on your website. Except pricing you have power to fix everything else. Pricing factor varies seller to seller as manufacturers can play with pricing but traders or drop-shippers do not have any control over this.
3) They found everything OK but not compelled to buy
This happen by various reasons like confusing UX and UI, poor website layout, uncertain and unfriendly site navigation, no effective Call-to-Action on product landing pages, not optimized for mobile or other devices other than desktop etc, there can be many reason that stopped customer from completing the purchase.
How can you improve Bounce Rate for an eCommerce Website
Traffic Report For My eCommerce Website
Here I pulled the analytics data for one of my eCommerce website. I have managed to get bounce rate down in range of 20%-25% from above 80% exactly 1 years back.
How I managed to reduce bounce rate from 80% to 23%?
Most of the online sellers invest in getting new traffic. You need to understand, unique and new visitors would not make your business more profitable, engaged visitors will do. You need to figure-out, why people come and leave your website, this can probably improve your conversation rate and reduce bounce rate. Through bounce rate report, you can measure the traffic quality of your website.
How To Reduce Bounce Rate?
There are lot more you can do on your website to make website user friendly and work on each and every detail. In this section, I will explain, how can you improve bounce rate for eCommerce site using correct keywords, for other tips please checkout these article How to Boost Conversions for Newly Opened Stores and Best Ways to Double Your eCommerce Sales
Work on Right Keyword
You need to work on right keyword to get visitors on right landing page. You need to work on CTR (click through rate) metric to reduce the bounce rate.
How to Find CTR Report
Log into your Google Search Console and go to Performance >> Search Result in left navigation.
How to lower the Bounce Rate and increase the CTR
1) Filter CTR Data
Once you chosen Data Period and Filters, tabular data will shown like below example:
2) Check Keywords and Position
You need to check keywords ranking below position 10 with CTR below 10%. I found CTR above 10% is good enough for any keyword. Now these are the keywords you need to work on.
3) Find URL for Keywords
Choose the relevant keyword from the filtered data, to find the URL ranking on that keyword.
4) Modify The Page
You need to modify this page now. It is proven that updating old content is better than rewriting new articles around the same keyword. Updating titles, meta tags and the content on your site will make Google very happy. For more detailed tips for managing landing page, checkout these articles Best SEO Practices to improve your eCommerce Sales and Understanding Customer Psychology in eCommerce and Motivating Them to Buy
Conclusion
To lower the Bounce Rate for an eCommerce website, you can take steps that are technical in nature – some of them will have immediate results. Some other steps you can take are analytical and will take longer to show. You will constantly need to analyze and figure out the numbers that show up in Google Analytics and Search Console.
If you know other and more effective ways to boost these values I would ask you to comment below and share your tricks with me.
