We know that a lack of visitors to your e-commerce website is a red flag but what about a mass of people that visit your website but leave too soon? How do you find the right balance of audience visiting your website?
A bounce refers to a single-page session on your website as explained by Google. A bounce rate refers to the percentage of the visitors who leave your website after viewing only one page.
The moderate or acceptable bounce rate lies between 26% to 70% for businesses.
Bounce rate in its essence is a relative term that alerts the business depending on their set goals and the nature of the website they are managing. The problem arises when the bounce rate is too low or too high for various reasons. You can check the bounce rate of your website on the Audience overview tab of google analytics. The tab shows you a live report for the individual channels and the pages in the behavior column. With the static bar, you can get an idea of whether the bounce rate is getting lower or higher.
Why Are Your e-Commerce Website Visitors Bouncing Back?
Reason #1: Something on Your Website is Dysfunctioning:
Bounce rate is an indicator that points to wider issues that you have to reveal by analyzing the data such as average site session duration, goal conversion rate, number of pages viewed, and so on. Something a minor problem can create a huge difference if the traffic to your website has significant traffic.
Out of these minor mishaps, is a single page increasing your bounce rate, which could be either your product page, homepage, or even the blog post page.
There could be several things wrong with these pages, such as lack of information, broken links, and buttons, wrong redirection, or outdated modules. Most of the time product pages are the culprits because of the unengaging or incomplete content.
Another reason is poorly targeted PPC campaigns. The sole purpose of the PPC campaigns is to bring your products to the attention of the consumers instantly. If your campaign copy, keywords and design are directed to a completely different or random page then you will experience a high bounce rate. The PPC landing pages should be carefully connected to your website. You should opt for optimized landing pages to target the right products.
Reasons #2: Your Website Performance Is Not Upto The Mark:
The biggest challenge in the e-commerce industry is the competition. If your website performance is not up to the mark, the customers will hop on the next train to your competitive market. The E-commerce market requires impeccable speed and smooth navigation to create an addictive shopping user experience. Website performance is highly influenced by the speed of the website and let’s not forget it also affects your SEO and PPC campaigns.
E-consumers on average bounce back within 10% with a rate of 65%. At max, your target is five seconds to keep the consumer interested. Tracking your website speed is a constant task since it could slow down with new content. Additionally, when we talk about performance, you should also consider the loading of images, products, working buttons, etc.
Reason #3: The Purchase Journey Lacks Modification:
For users, one of the biggest benefits of e-commerce is the accessibility of the products at their fingertips. This convenience allows the customers to research and browse through the online markets before making an informed decision.
The same beneficial benefit could be a nightmare for your business if the customer journey isn’t suitable or lacks a funnel. a customer might be reverting back to your site 4-5 times before and if the website is likely to lack mobile-friendly shopping modifications, you will be experiencing a negative bounce rate.
Here we are not talking about the poor UX but specifically, the mobile purchase experience directed through ads, influenced by the payment options, etc. The most common example is as the customer reaches the checkout by clicking through your ad but at the end, the payment options for them are limited and would require them to go through multiple form filling and OTP for payment. At this moment your customer is likely to return may and may not return on your next ad.
Similarly, modified customer journeys include the latest features such as multiple payment options, wishlist carts, product recommendations, choosing delivery date/ time, availability options and reviews and so on that smoothly let your customer pass the purchase funnel.
Reason 4# The Product Alignment Of Products Is Bad
Up to 30% of the e-commerce users use the internal site search for the product and have a higher conversion rate as well. When customers can’t find what they are looking for they go back or they bounce back to the google search engines, especially if the traffic is organic. Finding the right product requires summing up the effort of the design, copy, filters, and good navigation.
Most e-commerce websites experience a high bounce rate because they are too lousy to optimize their products with the right titles, meta titles, descriptions and miss out on features such as availability or in-stock status.
Reason 5# The UX is Not Bad But Annoying:
Even Google won’t favor your website in the SERPs if your website has a bad UX, nowadays the most common problem isn’t the bad UX but the annoying one. Adding bombarding features to your websites such as pop-up surveys, subscriptions, and hat boxes coupled with a complex menu layout are clearly huge indicators of your high bounce rate.
Bombarding features also influence the performance of your website and influence the conversion rate. The audience wants a peaceful smooth experience without interruption of the additional boxes.
Analyzing Your Bounce Rate By Percentage in E-commerce Industry
So, at what bounce rate percentage should you be alarmed, start looking for a root cause. Below we have mentioned some percentages and what they probably mean.
- A 25% or lower bounce rate means something is broken on your website and needs attention.
- A 26%-40% bounce rate is considered excellent traffic
- 41%-55% bounce rate is considered average. At this rate, there is no apparent threat but you should be vigilant about the changes.
- 56%-70% bounce rate is considered higher than normal. Depending on the website it could be acceptable as well. However, at this peak, you should start making some changes to get the bounce rate under control.
- A 70% or higher bounce rate is an alerting state for every business. It again means that something is broken or disruptive on your website and needs attention.
An E-commerce web design expert plays a significant role in controlling multiple factors that negatively influence your bounce rate.
In the e-commerce industry, the average bounce rate is 47% across devices. On average the desktop bounce rate tops up at 43% and 51% on the mobile and 45% on the different tablet devices. The bounce rate also varies according to the e-commerce industries/ for example the average bounce rate for the luxury e-commerce business is 45% while the average bounce rate for the home supply and tech e-commerce business is 51%.
