How to Reduce Bounce Rate in an Ecommerce Website

Last updated on September 21st, 2023 at 04:20 pm

Bounce rate is a KPI referring to the visitors who land on a website and leave before taking any action. Many eCommerce website owners are aware of the bounce rate issue. Visitors arrive on your website, stay for a few seconds, and then leave without visiting another page. In 2020, the average bounce rate for eCommerce sites was 47 percent.

If your eCommerce site’s bounce rate is over 47%, you should use these 10 best practices to boost engagement. You can MVT or A/B test your website components and improve your bounce rate, as detailed below:

1. Consider your eCommerce Search Functionality

When visitors cannot discover what they are looking for, it contributes to a high eCommerce bounce rate. The idea of using a search bar is that it aids users in finding information seamlessly. So, search bars are essential on sites with a lot of material and 100+ pages, such as eCommerce platforms.

You can boost your website’s search functionality issue and reduce the bounce rate in two ways:

A. Search Bar Accessibility

On eCommerce sites, customers mostly rely on searching to explore the site. So, the accessibility of the search bar is crucial on such websites.

The eCommerce website search bars have two main components. You type the question in the input box, then click on the search button to start looking for your query.

The search box usually allows for typing a limited number of characters. Although you may input large queries in small boxes, only a piece of the query is shown at a time. This makes it impossible to revise or examine the query.

If you don’t have enough space for a huge search bar, consider a dynamic bar. On a dynamic search bar, as one begins to type in the box, it expands automatically. As on the Sweaty Betty website, making your search bar sticky and floating is another method to improve its visibility. Stick it at the top of the page so that visitors who scroll down will not miss it.

B. Search Bar Results

It won’t matter whether you have the most accessible search box if users don’t get the appropriate results. If you’ve never given any thought to how site search affects your whole site experience, consider it now.

Visitors can use auto-suggest to help them avoid making mistakes while filling out their search queries. To prevent confusing or distracting visitors, make sure your auto-suggestions are useful.

Moreover, a placeholder text on the search box can guide users on the type of query they can ask.

2. Slow Page Load Affects Bounce Rate

Needless to say, people are getting increasingly impatient to see what they are looking for. The average human being’s attention span is less than a goldfish’s attention span of 9 seconds! So, the reality is most of your visitors don’t wait more than 2 or 3 seconds for your page to load.

That’s why the bounce rate of slow web pages is higher than the fast ones. Also, the conversion rate of fast websites is much higher than that of slow ones.

Fast page load is also a crucial measure in search engine optimization (SEO) practices. The performance of your site is crucial, and you should make all possible efforts to optimize the speed.

3. Avoid Distractions for a Reduced Bounce Rate

When browsing websites, people are frequently puzzled by too many options, which limits their ability to take action. Avoid information overload on your site. Reduce the number of distractions in your design by simplifying it.

For fewer distractions on your website, you can use A/B testing to make a home page with fewer options.

Moreover, intrusive ads are another example of distractions on a website. If you have too many advertisements, arrange them in a way that is not annoying. Nothing makes increasing the bounce rate easier than an ad appearing over a piece of content that visitors are reading. Make sure your ads are not where people seek information, such as the menu bar, search bar, or content.

4. Make a Call to Action (CTA) Stand Out

Use contrasting backgrounds and stand-out CTA to help users navigate through your website and in the right direction.

If visitors come to your product pages directly, it’s critical that they can quickly recognize a CTA button. So, This will take them to the next stage of the eCommerce sales funnel. The visitor will feel confused and may want to abandon the web page if there is no noticeable CTA.

Grovemade is a great example of a CTA that stands out. It also uses whitespace deliberately which not only makes CTA more visible but also cares about visitors’ peace of mind:

5. Help them Explore Further

There is a possibility that when a visitor lands on your page they are not quite ready to buy yet. Although you don’t want to overload your prospects with product information, they may require more compelling content. In that scenario, a noticeable CTA on the product page is not helpful. The solution is to place links to product manuals, instructions, and customer reviews. However, ensure that all of these pages include a “Buy” CTA so that visitors can click on it when ready.

6. Live Chat Reduces Bounce Rate

An improved product search and an extensive help section will answer many visitors’ questions. However, having a 24/7 live chat feature on your eCommerce website is even better. Visitors may need quick help at some points in the customer journey. Or they may want to ask questions you didn’t think they would ask.

If you are considering bounce rate reduction on your eCommerce website simply install a live chat widget.

7. Responsive Design Bounce Less

Check your Google Analytics to see how much of your traffic is coming from tablets and smartphones. Even if it’s only a small percentage of your total visits, you should invest in a responsive design. Why? Because smartphone penetration is increasing every year.

When your visitors have a positive experience on your website, they are more likely to stay. As a result, a responsive design that provides a fantastic user experience lowers the bounce rate.

8. Use Familiar Navigation Methods

Create a simple navigation menu and position it where visitors will naturally check for it. When users land on your website from any ad campaign or the referrer, they automatically scroll down. Because that’s how they expect website navigation to work.

If you use creative navigation, like side-scrolling or anything else, they get confused. We all know what most of visitors do when they feel confused on a website; they bounce.

So, instead of counting on the visitor learning curve and patience, try familiar navigation on your website.

9. Promote your Limited-time Offers

Play the FOMO (fear of missing out) card to stimulate the visitors’ curiosity. So, you can display your most incredible offers and discounts in a banner as an approach to attracting visitors. This method can decrease a website’s bounce rate by motivating visitors to proceed.

Limited-time deals attract attention. And if you don’t use them to entice visitors, you are missing an opportunity.

10. Avoid Video Auto-play

It’s great to have product videos and place them on all of your product pages for video marketing purposes. After all, videos have improved conversions for many online businesses. But, be cautious in implementing your video marketing strategy. Don’t annoy prospects by forcing them to watch a video for the sake of increasing conversions. Turn video auto-play off so that you don’t turn off prospects from your eCommerce store!

Testing Methods

Now you have some great ideas to reduce your eCommerce website bounce rate. Let’s see how you can test these ideas on your website using two practical UX testing methods:

A/B Testing

This testing method enables you to create two versions of your eCommerce website and compare digital marketing metrics on each. For example, you can check the optimal number of options that result in the highest conversion by A/B testing.

Version A is also called the champion, which is the current version of your website. Though version B is called the challenger, that is expected to exceed version A in conversion rate.

Multivariate Testing

Using MVT or multivariate testing you can check more than one variable modification. MVT divides traffic across all variations in the same way as A/B testing divides traffic between two testing variants.

Multivariate testing is a powerful technique for focusing your website redesign efforts on the most important components. It is also a widely used tool for testing landing pages.

Though, if your website has low traffic MVT may not be the best option for you. Because it demands high traffic for more reliable results on multiple testing variables.

Conclusion

Bounce rate is an important KPI that any eCommerce website must keep track of and improve. There are plenty of ways to reduce the bounce rate and help visitors stay longer on your site, which we outline. With a glimpse into the testing methods, we introduced methods to help better decide on various bounce rate reduction ideas.