What is a Bounce Rate and How it Can be Lowered

As an Ecommerce business the objective is to sell. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? Buyers keep buying, sellers keep selling, and the business stays afloat. Unfortunately the harsh reality is that this process, while simple, is not anywhere near a guarantee. The thought behind that is due to customers leaving a site before committing to an order, for one reason or another. The rate at which customers leave compared to customers that purchase, is called the bounce rate.
Bounces hurt businesses. On average, more than half of Ecommerce site traffic ‘bounces’. Getting that rate to around a third of customers places you at the top for order completions. Bounces hurt a businesses site on multiple fronts. The obvious is that lost traffic is a lost order. But did you know that the greater this percentage is, the worse your search engine rankings are? One way to find your bounce rate is through Google Analytics.
However, you can’t consider all bounces as negative attention. The kind of bounce that businesses want to stay clear of are those where a person goes to your site, only to leave within a matter of seconds. Whether it’s from a wrong turn, immediate disinterest, etc. This is what truly harms your site. But, a type of bounce that will still be factored into your Bounce Rate that doesn’t tell the full-story: when customers view your site for a while. This could be for all sorts of reasons, taking a look, showing their friends, seeing what they want to get for later down the line. While they are a bounce, they aren’t necessarily people who aren’t shoppers.

By now you’ve realized that for your business to stay ahead of the game is by minimizing your bounce rate. But how can you achieve that? There are a few methods that can help you keep site traffic browsing and shopping.

Keep things simple

For starters, the step between a business receiving money and a customer’s wallet is the checkout page. However, if it is too complicated, you will surely deter customers. Keep things like site navigation, product searches, and of course the checkout, as simple as humanly possible. It should be a carefree experience, not a Where’s Waldo search. If your customer can’t figure your site out, why bother buying from it?

Last effort Popups

Programming a popup into a site that gives the customer more options before leaving can be the difference between a sale and nada. While they might seem intrusive, they actually happen to work in many cases. Just to be clear though, that doesn’t mean a huge window begging for the customer to stay with a sob story, annoying video advertisements, and an X out button that is so small you wouldn’t be able to see it if you zoomed in at 200 magnification. The way to make these just right can be done in several different ways. Perhaps offer a discount. Show links to product recommendations based on what they were browsing. Give them an invite to your newsletter. Free shipping. The possibilities are endless.

Clear and Concise

One of the most annoying things businesses tend to do is list a price on their page, only for you to checkout and see that there are additional markups not listed originally, like taxes or shipping. Implement these into the prices to reflect the true total. It’ll establish a sense of trust between businesses and customers, and pave the way for future purchases.

Product Pages Should be On-Point

Making your product pages the best they can be is extremely important. Make sure to showcase product reviews, high quality pictures, and enticing descriptions, at the forefront of the customer’s view field. If your product is truly good, then your product page should reflect that.

Wrapping things up

So, your business is down on it’s luck. You see that people are clicking on and clicking off in droves. This means your bounce rate needs to be managed down to a reasonable number. Optimize your site experience with precision to keep customers clicking and buying, through the above strategies, and your own creative intuition. After all, it only takes a few clicks for a page found on google to turn into a positive interaction with money exchanging hands.