Establishing Good Metrics: Website Bounce Rate
A website bounce rate can be a confusing metric. Unlike conversion or click-through rates, its highs and lows don't always give you a straightforward answer to what should be improved on your eCommerce website.
Knowing how to interpret the website bounce rate can help you adjust your eCommerce marketing strategy and provide insights into customer behaviour.
What is a Website Bounce Rate?
A website bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who leave your website without taking any action that keeps them there. For example:
A visitor arrives at the website and exists the browser.
A visitor arrives at the website and clicks the "back" button or enters a new URL in the address bar.
A visitor arrives at the website and clicks a link that leads them to an external website.
To calculate a website bounce rate, you need to divide the number of users who only visited one page of your website by the total number of website visitors. For example, if 1,000 people visited your website and 100 left without taking any internal action, your website bounce rate is 10%.
You can check your website bounce rate as well as individual page bounce rates in Google Analytics (GA).
What is the Average eCommerce Website Bounce Rate?
When it comes to eCommerce websites, the average bounce rate is high — about 45%. Usually, for e-stores, it can be between 20% and 50%. If your bounce rate is under 35%, you are likely to be in good shape.
It's important to understand that there isn't such a thing as an "ideal" bounce rate. Each website will have a certain bounce rate. However, if it starts getting worse over time and affects your conversion rate then you need to re-evaluate your marketing strategy and website design.
A high website bounce rate isn't always bad. For example, if you have a wide audience, your bounce rate is likely to be higher than for niche eCommerce websites that have less traffic.
Is a Website Bounce Rate a Ranking Factor?
A website bounce rate is an INDIRECT ranking factor.
The debate about website bounce rate being Google's ranking factor is ongoing. Google itself denies using bounce rates in its algorithms. However, some companies may notice improved ranking when decreasing the bounce rate. Why does it happen?
The answer is simple.
Actions you take to reduce your bounce rate tend to improve the quality and relevance of your website. As a result, it attracts more traffic, gains authority, and becomes more appealing to Google's ranking algorithm.
Factors That Affect Your Bounce Rate
Key factors that affect your website bounce rate include:
Keyword optimization — if your website ranks for the wrong keyword, bounce rates can skyrocket. The same can happen if your meta tags and description are misleading.
Website speed — slow loading pages have high bounce rates. With Core Web Vitals becoming a ranking factor, slow web pages could affect your position on the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages).
Website design — poorly organized website navigation could cause the visitor to stop using it.
External links — external links could take the user elsewhere, thus increasing your bounce rate. You could set your GA parameters to exclude visitors that use external links to leave the website from the bounce rate metric.
Ads — too many ads could distract the visitor from the purpose of visiting your website.
CTAs — creating catchy calls to action and placing them correctly decreases your website bounce rate.
Informational pages — if your website has numerous informational pages (blogs, policies, Q&A sections) without proper CTAs, its bounce rate is likely to be high.
Content quality — low-quality content can lead to high bounce rates.
Industry — different industries have different bounce rates. For example, the food and drink industry has a higher average bounce rate (65.62%) than the real estate industry (44.50%).
Marketing channels — the origin of traffic to your website affects its bounce rate. For example, traffic that comes from emails has the lowest bounce rate (35.20%) while the traffic from Display ads has the highest bounce rate (56.50%).
If your bounce rate is growing and affecting your company's bottom line, you need to review the above-mentioned factors.
How to Reduce Your Bounce Rate
If you've determined that the bounce rate for your website is higher than you prefer, you may want to consider taking the following action:
Reduce the number of links to external websites and work on your internal linking strategy (the rule of thumb is to have two - three internal links on each page).
Simplify the purchase experience on your website as much as possible, so it becomes intuitive.
Add internal links to your Q&A pages.
Take advantage of popups that go live when someone tries to leave your website (exit popups).
Review the quality of your content and make sure it includes proper internal links and CTAs.
Use only one CTA per page and make it obvious.
Re-evaluate your paid search marketing campaign to make sure your ads lead to relevant pages on your website.
Review your product listings to make sure you are using high-quality photos, transparent prices, and clear descriptions.
Implement cross-selling tactics, so consumers click to visit other pages of your website.
Write attractive and relevant meta descriptions.
Allow external links to open in new windows.
Make sure your website is as mobile-friendly as possible.
Overall, reducing your bounce rate boils down to improving the quality of your website and user experience.
Using Website Bounce Rate to Improve Your Business
Exploring the website bounce rate can give your eCommerce marketing strategy an extra push toward optimization. While it's not a ranking factor, this metric can point to some problems you may have with your e-store.
A high website bounce rate isn't always a bad thing. However, if this metric is growing rapidly, you need to rethink different aspects of the website design and marketing strategy.
Would you like to learn how to analyse your bounce rate and use it for improving your campaign? We are here to help.