| 12 min read

What Is A Good Bounce Rate For Ecommerce?

In ecommerce, bounce rates are an essential metric to track. Higher bounce rates mean fewer customers who stay on your website and place an order, while lower bounce rates mean more revenue and, ultimately, more profit.

Given that you must put in the time, effort, and money to draw customers to your website, reducing your bounce rate is vital to keeping costs down and selling more products. We’ll explain what you need to know about bounce rates and how to keep your website’s bounce rates low.

What is a Good Bounce Rate in Ecommerce?

Ecommerce sites, like any website, want to keep bounce rates as low as possible. The longer people spend browsing your website, the more likely they will find a product they like and place an order.

In ecommerce, if you can reduce your site's bounce rate to 20% or less, that’s considered very good by most people in the industry. On the other hand, bounce rates of 45% to 50% or higher are considered high.

Average Ecommerce Bounce Rates

According to CXL, a digital marketing education website, the average bounce rate for ecommerce websites ranges from 20% to 45%. Anything over 45% is seen as a high bounce rate.

One thing that influences the average bounce rate is how people reach your website. Certain channels produce lower bounce rates than others.

The channels for reaching a website include:

  • Direct. The visitor types your web address directly into their browser.

  • Display. The visitor clicked an advertisement on another website.

  • Referral. The visitor clicked a link (not an ad) on another website.

  • Social. The visitor was directed to your site through a social media platform.

  • Organic search. The visitor reached your site from a search result. Higher rankings from search engines can increase the number of visitors and also reduce bounce rates.

  • Paid search. The visitor clicked a sponsored link to your site that appeared in their search results.

  • Email. The visitor clicked a link in an email they received.

Of these channels, email has the lowest bounce rate, and referral has the second lowest.

Email bounce rates are low because customers are generally interested in your product. They’ve self-selected by signing up for an email list or newsletter about your industry or company. A referral is similar because users are generally already browsing websites on topics related to your industry and are likely interested in what you offer.

On the other hand, display and social have the highest bounce rates. Display has a high bounce rate because people typically dislike advertising or may not trust it. Some clicks on ads are bound to be mistakes, and your ads may get targeted to uninterested people.

Social bounce rates are high because social media users typically visit your site for a short period, then return to browsing social media. Most social media users use phones to browse, meaning bounce rates can be even higher if your site isn’t optimized for phones.

Bounce rates are often influenced by the device the visitor uses. Mobile devices tend to have the highest bounce rates, while users on desktop computers have lower bounce rates. If you optimize your homepage or landing page for mobile devices, you may be able to reduce bounce rates.

What Bounce Rate Means

Bounce rate is an internet metric that tracks the percentage of your website’s visitors that view only a single page and then leave with no other interaction.

For example, a customer who clicks a link on another website, views your product page, then closes the browser tab without making a purchase or looking at other products has bounced.

On the other hand, someone who clicks a link to your ecommerce store and browses a few pages has not bounced, even if they don’t ultimately place an order.

If your online store has a high bounce rate, it can indicate a few things.

One is that your advertising isn’t targeted correctly. If you sell golf equipment, but primarily non-golfers view all your advertisements, you can expect a high bounce rate because the people seeing your site aren’t interested.

High bounce rates can also indicate problems with your website that give it a poor user experience.

A low bounce rate means potential customers spend more time on your site, making them more likely to place an order.

How to Improve Bounce Rates

Reducing bounce rates is an important goal for every website. The more time people spend on your site, the more likely they will place an order. These tips can help you reduce your bounce rates and increase conversion rates.

Fix website usability and user experience issues.

One of the easiest ways to push people away from your website is to make it annoying or painful to use.

Imagine visiting a website on your phone only to find that it doesn’t adapt to your screen size, forcing you to scroll side to side to read large paragraphs and find navigation buttons. There’s little chance you’d use the site for long. Broken links and poor navigation menus can also be intensely frustrating.

The easier it is to use your website, the more likely people will stick around. You can use usability testing to identify issues with the user experience and improve them.

Improve loading speeds.

The faster your website loads, the better. These days, attention spans are short, so if someone has to wait more than a few seconds for your webpage to load, they’ll probably close the browser tab and move on.

Consider switching web hosts or using a service that helps improve page load time if your website loads too slowly.

Improve your product pages.

You want your product pages to do two things—show customers all the essential details of what you’re selling and convince them to add the item to their cart and check out.

A good product page has clear pictures of the items you’re selling, an easy-to-read product description, and prominently features positive customer ratings and reviews. You should also make sure the “add to cart” button stands out so customers know where it is and so it’s easy for them to click.

Make your website clear and more useful.

People who reach your website typically have a reason to be there. They might be looking for a solution to a problem or trying to purchase a product.

If the information on your website is easy to read and understand, well-formatted, and straightforward, it makes people more likely to stick around and interact with your website.

On the other hand, poorly written content that doesn’t offer value can drive customers away.

Improve your website search engine optimization.

Search engine optimization (SEO) helps your website rank more highly on search engines. Given that search traffic has some of the lowest bounce rates outside of email and referral traffic, taking steps to increase the number of customers who reach your website through search engines can pay dividends.

Make sure your website looks legitimate and trustworthy

Online commerce relies heavily on trust. Your customers need to believe that your website is legitimate and trustworthy, or they won’t be willing to make a purchase.

A website filled with popups and sketchy-looking graphics or advertisements can make customers think twice about placing an order. A clean-looking website with an easy-to-use interface and information about your company can increase customer trust.

Using standard security tools to keep your website and customer data safe is also essential. Few people will be willing to enter credit card information on a website that doesn’t use a secure, encrypted connection.

Track and optimize advertising

Advertising is an important way to draw customers to your website, but you must ensure you’re getting the right customers.

When you start a new ad campaign, make sure to check on it regularly. Your advertising partner should be able to provide analytics that let you see where your customers come from and their demographic information. 

If you notice that a specific demographic has a high bounce rate, you can reconsider advertising to them or adjust your advertising strategy accordingly. Similarly, if an ad effectively draws a particular group of people and keeps bounce rates low, you can focus that campaign more heavily on that group.

You can also consider your advertising method and whether your product might be better suited to a different form of advertising.

Another consideration is the content on the page you’re directing people to through the advertisement. If ads pointing to specific landing pages have high bounce rates, you might need to revise the copy on those pages.

Give people a reason to browse

If someone visits your site and buys one product, that’s better than a bounce, but you could aim higher.

Giving people a reason to browse your website for longer through cross-selling can serve two purposes. 

First, it gives people planning to buy one item a reason to look at the other products you sell. That could increase the amount they spend on your website.

Second, someone might visit your site, see a product, decide it isn’t right for them, and leave without making a purchase. With effective cross-selling, they might spend more time on your website and find a product they are interested in purchasing. That converts a non-customer into a sale.

The Final Word

Bounce rates are important for any website to track, but they’re essential for ecommerce sites. Every bounce is a potential customer who ultimately didn’t make a purchase. If you’re paying for traffic through ads, that means money spent without a return.

If you put in the effort to make your website easy to use and filled with helpful information, you can reduce bounce rates and increase sales.


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