We know someone who used to have a website to sell trampolines. However, they faced a significant problem: the high user bounce rate.
Any website needs to have a bounce rate as low as possible. This article will discuss how to reduce your e-commerce website’s bounce rate.
Before we begin, let’s find out what bounce rate is in Ecommerce.
What is bounce rate in ecommerce?
Simply put, a website’s bounce rate is a metric that tells how your audience engages with your website.
When someone visits a single page of your website and doesn’t go any further, it will increase your bounce rate, as that particular person did not interact with your call-to-action (CTA).
So, bounce rate is calculated when a particular person visits your website and leaves without interacting with it, i.e., purchasing something, clicking on any links, etc.
If you have an e-commerce website, you must keep your bounce rate as low as possible. If it is high, there could be many reasons for that. However, you need not worry about it as all that can be fixed with the help of some effort.
How to reduce bounce rate in ecommerce?
If you own an e-commerce website, your CTA is that your audience makes a purchase. If your audience leaves without making a purchase, it will automatically increase your bounce rate and decrease your profits. So, you must reduce your bounce rate to as low as possible.
Let’s see how it’s done!
Reduce the load time of your website
A website that takes a lot of time to load is one of the most frustrating things on the internet. It can be linked with the famous saying, ‘What is worse than no internet? Slow internet.’ No one likes to wait for web pages to open up.
So, one of the first things you should do to reduce the bounce rate of your e-commerce website is to ensure that it takes as less time as possible to load.
If someone asks you whether your web pages load up within 5 seconds, and your answer is no, you could be losing many customers this way because when it comes to e-commerce, speed is one of the most critical elements to have in your website. The faster your audience can browse the products and make payments, the more likely they will revisit your website.
Here are some techniques that you can implement to speed up your website:
Remove any query strings from static pages
Edit and optimize .htaccess file
Optimizing images via WordPress plugins
Use tools to evaluate current speed, such as CloudFlare
Improve your content’s readability
One thing we can’t emphasize enough is ‘content is king’. Apart from having good quality content, your content must be readable. Another primary reason your audience leaves your website without interacting with it is its lack of readability.
The thing that readers avoid the most is reading large chunks of text, even if it is something of interest to them. Always remember to break down your content into small, easy-to-read paragraphs.
Your content may be very well written, but if the formatting is not done properly then all your efforts will go down the drain, as no one would like to read it. Which would eventually result in a higher bounce rate.
So, when writing a detailed product description for your e-commerce website, always follow the above instructions and make it as easy as possible for your audience to read what you have written.
Ensure your website is mobile-friendly
We all are guilty of making purchases online while waiting in a line or commuting from one place to another. If we do this, so do our customers.
To take advantage of your customers purchasing items from their mobile phones, you should ensure that your website is easily accessible and can be viewed from multiple devices, especially mobile phones.
Shopping from mobile phones has spread like wildfire. Your customers are on their phones for over 4 hours a day and are bound to visit their favorite e-commerce website at least once daily.
If your website is mobile-friendly, you can take full advantage of it by keeping your customers hooked and ensuring that they make regular purchases from your e-commerce website.
You can make your website mobile-friendly by following these simple rules:
Use simple menus and navigation
Never ask your users to fill out lengthy forms
Your CTA should be visible
You should have a responsive theme
Ensure your customers can contact customer service easily
Always include a search button
Find and fix usability issues
Another reason that can contribute to your high bounce rate are usability issues. It is pretty simple, if your audience can not access either some parts or your whole website because it doesn’t work, then they are bound to leave. Hence, increasing your bounce rate.
Some common usability issues which occur but can be easily fixed:
404 errors
Non-mobile-friendly websites, i.e., they don’t open or respond on mobile phones
Technical glitches
Broken links
Faulty drop-down menus
So, if you find that your website has any of these errors during the usability testing, you should consider fixing them as soon as possible to ensure your bounce rate decreases.
Have a clear call-to-action (CTA)
Once you have succeeded in attracting visitors to your headlines, it is time to tell them what you want them to do on your website in the form of a clear and compelling CTA. If you have a weak CTA, that can be a significant reason for your bounce rate to be high.
So, every time a customer is on your e-commerce website, they should easily be able to see the buy option where they can click and make payment seamlessly. It is important to note that your CTA should be as compelling as possible making users want to click on it.
Your CTA must stand out from the rest of your content. It can be as simple as a different text or a different color, as these small changes can make a massive difference in grabbing your customer’s attention.
Attract the right audience
Millions and millions of people on the internet are looking for things to buy, and you must attract the right audience to your e-commerce website. This can be done with the help of thorough keyword research and using the relevant ones on your website which can attract high traffic.
The other important element in attracting the right audience is having relevant content. Even if you use the right keywords, having irrelevant content will increase your bounce rate.
If you attract the wrong audience to your e-commerce website, they will leave immediately, resulting in a high bounce rate. So, to eliminate this, ensure you use the right keywords and relevant content.
Display your top deals upfront
One thing that people love on e-commerce websites are deals. Especially the ones which are time bound, as they create a sense of urgency and hook potential customers onto the product, eventually luring them into purchasing it.
So, one of the most effective ways to get your audience engaged with your website and stop them from leaving is to display your best deals and discounts on the homepage itself. The limited-time deals are something that people find hard to resist. So, if you are offering some limited-time deals, you should not fail to display them on your homepage.
Use these tactics to ensure that the bounce rate of your e-commerce website is as low as possible.
Controlling the bounce rate of your e-commerce website is a massive contributor to the success it can achieve. Having a low bounce rate means that more and more people that visit your website, are completing the desired action, i.e., making a purchase.