Ecommerce Bounce Rate Demystified: How to Understand and Reduce it
There’s no doubt about it: bounce rate is one of the most important ecommerce metrics. If you’re not tracking your bounce rate, you’re making a big – and very costly – mistake.
At the surface level or most basic understanding of ecommerce bounce rates, a high bounce rate could be costing you a lot of money. A climbing bounce rate means potential customers are stepping backwards out of your conversion funnel with their cash still in their pocket. This is your “exit rate”, and reducing it will positively impact your bottom line.
Before you dive in and start analyzing and dissecting your online store to reduce bounce it’s important to take a step back and realize a few things.
First, every website (especially ecommerce stores) have customers who bounce. Even the most successful global brands experience bounce. It doesn’t matter where you’re traffic is coming from – whether it’s from social media, search engines, or through referrals – you will never eliminate bounces completely. Nor does it matter how high your total number of visitors is. Both high and low-traffic sites have bounce rates in the double digits.
Here are the bounce rates of top ecommerce brands during the first month of 2017
Even ecommerce stores like Best Buy and Walmart have bounce rates over 30%.
Second, it’s impossible to reduce your ecommerce bounce rate to nothing. You always have a stream of new customers who aren’t quite ready to make a purchase. In fact, 99% of customers don’t complete a purchase on their first visit.
99% of customers don't complete a purchase on their first visit. #bouncerate #abandonment #ecommerce #opimization Click To TweetAnd that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
But before I get too deep into why bounce rate in ecommerce is such an important metric and how you can leverage that data, let’s look at the definition.
Just a quick list of all the content you’ll find in this article:
1. Bounce Rate Definition: What is Bounce Rate in Google Analytics?
2. Where traditional bounce rate calculation falls short?
3. What to do with your bounce rate data in ecommerce?
4. What is the average (“good” and the “bad”) bounce rate in an ecommerce store?
5. How to reduce ecommerce bounce rate?
6. A case study in bounce rate trickery
Let’s dig in!
Google Analytics Support Docs offer a pretty basic definition of bounce rates:
Bounce Rate is the percentage of single-page sessions.
The problem with this definition is that it’s incomplete and leads to common confusion that a bounce is inherently bad. The confusion is understandable.
In analytics, a bounce is calculated specifically as a session that triggers only a single request, such as when a visitor lands on your product page and then exits without taking any other action/interaction during that session.
It reminds me of Kaushik’s famous take on customer bounce: came, puked, left.
An interaction means any hit sent to Google Analytics (or your analytics server of choice): of course, it could be a pageview (and the user went to another site) but it could also be a transaction, a social share, an event (when non-interaction is false), or a virtual pageview user-defined hit.
This means that if your user lands on the website and you send an event, then there is no bounce, even though it could have been a single-page visit.
Wherever possible, you should modify your web analytics software to account for these differences. Doing this will give you a far clearer picture of your true bounce rate.
Most platforms, like Google Analytics, allow you to impose certain criteria on your data. Keep in mind that improving your bounce rate isn’t just about reducing one-page sessions, it’s also about structuring your data analysis so that your results are as clear and true-to-life as possible. Which leads nicely onto the next point…
Analyzing traditional bounce rates is never as simple as “high bounce rate bad, low bounce rate good”. It’s important to remember how your customers act and behave once they land on your site.
Equally important is the context of their visit – why are they shopping with you in the first place?
Making decisions based on ecommerce bounce rate alone can be misleading.
Let’s assume you’re selling a big-ticket item on your store like an outdoor fire pit so you launch a campaign to promote it with a custom landing page tied to a Facebook remarketing campaign.
Since a landing page has limited navigation – in this case it’s the option to purchase one of several types of fire pits (add to cart), the interactions are minimal.
Some of your users are interested in the offer but need a day or so to discuss it with a spouse or think over the purchase.
Other users were grabbed by the campaign advertisement but once they got into the page they realized they weren’t sure about the normal prices – so they wanted to do some price comparison before they make their decision.
There’s even a segment of users who were initially interested but after reading more about the product they decide it’s not for them, so they leave.
Each of those audience segments would technically count as a bounce, but they all have very different intent, and each has a varying percentage likelihood of returning to complete the transaction.
Can you lump these users together in your analyses? Of course not, because ecommerce customers bounce for a variety of reasons (remember to always listen to the voice of customer):
With just a small tweak though you can get a lot more value and insight from your bounce rate in Google Analytics (from other ecommerce Google Analytisc reports too)
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You need to adjust your bounce rate if you want more actionable insights. To do that you have to amend your tracking code to change the way ecommerce bounce rate is calculated.
By amending your analytics code you can trigger events based on specific activity based on the behavior (or targeted behavior) of your audience. This way certain segments of your audience are excluded from bounce calculations.
For ecommerce sites you typically have a fair bit of information when you’ve crafted better product descriptions. It can take a user some time to review the offer. The longer they read, the more likely they are to make an informed purchase decision – even if it comes later.
Reviewing your average page durations can help you benchmark and “guesstimate” the amount of time spent on a product page before someone is considered an engaged visitor.
Redefine your tracking so anyone below that threshold is considered a bounce.
For example, if your average buyer spends 30 seconds reviewing content before making a purchase then you could set anything below 20 or 25 seconds as a bounce.
Simply add this line of code to your website and voila – it works (you can also implement such an event through Google Tag Manager):
The event will be executed after 20,000 milliseconds (20 seconds), so visits longer than that will no longer be recorded as a bounce in Google Analytics.
Scroll depth tracking could also be an alternative modified bounce rate.
This is a great indication what content is interesting to a user, and it solves the problem of the one-single page bounce rate (if a user scrolls, an event is sent – so there is no bounce). This is ideal if your product pages contain a lot of information below the fold like Amazon product pages (but how to reate urgency on your product pages?).
To set up this event you will need to use a little bit of javascript: check out Justin Cutroni’s blog post or this piece from Moz on scroll tracking.
A lot of online retailers run a mile at even the mention of analytics terms like events, tracking, segmentation etc. But the simple truth is that filtering data on the basis of user behavior and intent is a relatively straightforward matter. And doing so will have implications beyond simply improving bounce rates. The new insights gained from this data can have ramifications for your digital marketing plan, optimization strategy, product page copy, calls to action, and more.
Growcode also recommends this eBook:
Ecommerce Optimization Checklist of a 7+ Figure Online Store
With your bounce rate segmented to focus on those visitors who legitimately bounce without a valuable level of engagement you can analyze that data per product and landing page to see where optimization needs to take place.
Prioritizing your efforts is important here; don’t start with the pages sporting the highest bounce rates. Conversely, you shouldn’t ignore pages with lower bounce rates.
Instead, prioritize based on how those bounce rates impact your revenue.
For example; Let’s say you’ve got two product pages on your site. For the sake of simplicity the products are priced similarly at $49.
1. Product Page A averages 8,000 monthly visits with a bounce rate of 39%, and converts at 6%
2. Product Page B averages 1,000 monthly visits with a bounce rate of 76% and converts at 4.8%
If you put effort into optimizing page B first and reduce your bounce rate by 10% you’re only engaging an additional 76 visitors and converting an additional 4 customers.
However, the same 10% reduction in bounce on product page A helps retain an additional 312 visitors, and 19 additional customers at the current conversion rate (it helps to boost customer lifetime value).
When deciding which pages to target for improving bounce rates consider a number of factors:
A great tool to help you prioritize your optimization (especially for ecommerce sites) is the content grouping ecommerce Google Analytics reports.
Group your content to see page templates which need the biggest attention. Remember that when analyzing Bounce Rate, the second metric that you should look at to weigh the importance is the number of entrances. In the example above Checkout, Category Pages and (not set) are groups with the lowest number of entrances so you shouldn’t bother about them in terms of bounce rate.
There’s no such thing as a “good” level bounce rate. Because content across your site varies as much as the intent of the visitor it’s possible for a page to have a high bounce rate – much higher than product pages – without it necessarily being an issue.
Website bounce rates can also often vary drastically depending on traffic source, time period, product categories and more. Visitors which have been acquired through Google Adwords, for example, may have a much higher bounce rate than visitors that arrive through search engines with high commercial intent. So always keep in mind variations in your own data.
As a general principle, your targeted and expected bounce rate should reflect the purpose of the page.
According to ConversionXL, content-rich pages reference pages are all “bounce worthy” and typically have much higher bounce rates. This includes:
The next steps to prioritizing your optimization efforts is to know “average” bounce rates, to see where you fall among your competitors and other industries in ecommerce, and how different audience segments bounce.
So, what is the average bounce rate? It depends.
Most websites have bounce rates somewhere between 26% and 70%. As a rule of thumb, a bounce rate in the range of 26% to 40% is great. 41% to 55% is ok. 56% to 70% is higher than average but may not be cause for alarm depending on the website. Bounce rates over 70% could be a problem.
Most #websites have bounce rates somewhere between 26% and 70%. As a rule of thumb, a #bouncerate in the range of 26% to 40% is great. 41% to 55% is ok. Bounce rates over 70% could be a problem. #ecommerce #optimization Click To Tweet
30-45% bounce rates are the most common among sites and are a “golden” zone and a good starting benchmark. Source.
ConversionXL’s guide to bounce rate benchmarks recommends a few different benchmarks when determining your “ideal” average, starting with website type.
Ecommerce sites shouldn’t compare bounce rates against content-heavy sites like blogs. You should only use ecommerce stores as bounce rate benchmarks. Remember that this is the level of site-wide bounce rate. It could be higher for certain page types. Source.
Next up, each industry has different average bounce rates.
Pay attention to industry benchmarks – the difference between “shopping” and “food & Drink” is 20 pp. Source.
Kissmetrics offers a similar infographic on bounce rates by industry and site type.
This KISSmetrics infographic shows average bounce rates by industry sites and the type of content typically triggering those bounce rates. Source.
Here’s where you can start segmenting your data to dig deeper, and this is critical to any analysis you conduct – especially conversions and bounce rates.
Start with segmenting your traffic by device. Even slight navigation issues that may not be apparent on desktop can cause significant friction in the mobile cro.
Usually mobile devices have a 10 – 20 pp higher bounce rate than desktops. But if the bounce rate is much higher than that – it could reveal technical or usability problems on your mobile website. Source.
You should also segment your bounce rate by channel to review how your marketing campaigns, and the types of traffic they generate, are impacting your bounce rate. Here are the channels monitored within Analytics by Google.
Neil Patel shares a variety of other segments you should analyze, depending on your business model and marketing, include:
OK. Let’s back up a second. You now know a lot about this metric, how to measure it and analyze. You know how to filter your data properly to get your “true” bounce rate as opposed to the convoluted and incorrect one that Google Analytics throws out. You also realize the importance of accounting for variations, using industry-specific benchmarks, and taking a strategic approach to picking the pages to optimize.
You now know a lot about this metric, how to measure it and analyze. But how to reduce it? Here’s a down-and-dirty checklist for reducing your bounce rate. You can implement these tips instantly. So there are no excuses…
1. Ensure visitors know they’re in the right place – When a potential customer lands on your site, they want an answer to the question, “Am I in the right place?” Make sure your ad copy, USPs, discounts, images, and all brand elements are consistent between ads and landing pages.
If there was a particular piece of USP (like “free shipping”) in the ad on Google, make sure it stands out on the landing page so user knows that he is in the right place.
2. Make your website blazing fast – The bounce rate of a page that takes five seconds to load is 90% higher than one that takes one second to load. Your page load time should be no more than three seconds. According to data from more than 35,000 ecommerce sites collected by Pingdom, after this tipping point the bounce rate soars. Time to call up your IT guys.
You should aim for a 3 seconds load time because according to Pingdom after this tipping point the bounce rate soars.
3. Tell visitors what to do next – Do visitors know exactly what to do when they land on your page? Are the steps to order – or to find something new if the current product isn’t hitting the spot – absolutely crystal clear? Include a colourful, eye-catching call-to-action for those customers that have found something they like. But also ensure there are other options – related products, items on sale, new arrivals etc. – for those that haven’t.
Remember to show other items in your online store in case user doesn’t like the product so he can quickly find something that is interesting.
Watch the video that sums up all the information about reducing bounce rate so everything is crystal clear about how to reduce high ecommerce bounce rate with these three proven strategies.
Here’s real case clearly illustrating how a wrongly reported bounce rate could impact your business in a negative way.
We had a client showcasing surprisingly low bounce rates (less than 10% site wide). Their marketing team was celebrating and considered it a great achievement. Unfortunately, the data was reported falsely.
Since the rate was abnormally low our team dug into their Analytics and discovered the average bounce rate on product pages was 0%.
It turns out when a user visited their product pages they landed in a tab resulting in the tracking code marking that as an automatic event. Each visitor triggered two hits that were registered: one pageview and one event.
Not a single visit was recorded as a bounce because every visit registered a false interaction.
In reality, the client’s bounce rate was closer to 60%. Because of this error they had no inclination that they were losing revenue and saw no reason or opportunity to improve.
We’ve seen similar cases with other clients where mistakes in site and analytics configuration log bounce rates incorrectly, such as duplicate analytics codes (duplicate hits), incorrectly implemented tracking (events trigger on entry even with no interaction) and even third party add-ons like live chat that registers as a visitor interaction.
It might present as a sudden drop in bounce rates for no discernable reason, like in the example below where bounce rates plummeted to 6%:
A sudden drop in bounce rate without cause, especially a drop below 20%, should be a red flag that’s cause for investigation.
The base bounce rates in your Google Analytics should be taken with a grain of salt because there’s far too much data being lumped together and analyzed to create that single percentage. By itself, bounce rate is an incredibly deceptive KPI when you consider how much it can change depending on how you segment the data.
The base #bouncerates in your Google Analytics should be taken with a grain of salt because there's far too much data being lumped together and analyzed to create that single percentage. #ecommerce #googleanalytics #reports Click To TweetThis is why segmentation is so critical – analyze the data in a way that is most relevant to the page type, your audience, how they interact with you, the campaigns you run, their devices, and more. The more granular you get with data analysis, the easier it is to determine the cause of visitor bounce so you can prioritize optimization and follow through with changes that will have the most significant impact on lifting revenue.
But not only analyzing bounce rate might help you to better understand the processes in your ecommerce. Check out our article: 8 Must-Have Google Analytics Reports for Ecommerce Optimization.
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