How to decrease bounce rate of an e commerce website?

Are you not able to track enough traffic to your website?

Do the visitors just peep in your website and exit?

If yes, this indicates the visitors are not interested in your web content. Glancing at the website and then quitting it in lesser time in known as bounce from a website.

Now let’s have a look at the technical definition of bounce rate. Google Analytics defines bounce rate as the percentage of the viewers who only visit the page they land and then abandon it. The user may leave the web page due to a certain number of reasons.

The page may have design or functionality issue. Pop-ups are a nightmare and the visitor is likely to quit.

What is normal bounce rate?

On an average a bounce rate of 50% or less is considered as fair. However the bounce rate cannot be a constant and changes with the type of website.

For example, the content websites have a bounce rate of 40-60%, web portals have 10-30% and simple landing pages have a bounce rate of 70-90%.

How does a click turn into Bounce?

The click by the viewer which could have turned into a conversion and meet a bad fate of bouncing under the following conditions:

• The website takes a significant amount of time to load.
• The user landed in your web page inadvertently.
• They click on the back button of the browser.
• No call-to-action button.

Hope, now you have got a fair idea of what the bounce rate is. Now let’s learn on how to decrease bounce rate using the Google Analytics.

The Google Analytics tool can be used to track the organic traffic to the websites. The biggest benefit of Google Analytics is that it helps you monitor the overall
progress of your website.

This powerful tool calculates the bounce rate of a website and presents a brief report to marketers.

Bounce rate = Total number of bounces of a webpage/Total number of visits on a webpage

When you login into your Google Analytics account and view the dashboard of your website, you can see all the statistics which elaborate the current traffic to your website. If you get higher bounce rates, this indicates these landing pages are not relevant for the users.

Adjusting the bounce rates in Google Analytics can prove helpful to decrease the bounce rate. For example: If yours is a news website or a blog, the viewers will read the required page and exit from there without browsing other pages.

Here the problem arises, since the visits are single page visits, the Google Analytics will consider them as 100% bounce.

This situation demands the adjusting bounce rates which can be done in two ways:

Adjusting Bounce Rate by calculating time spent on webpage

Adjusting Bounce Rate Using Google Tag Manager

Now let’s learn some other ways to reduce the bounce rate if you trigger it on a large scale.

Focus on the Size of Search Bar

At times, the search bar is not exactly visible to the user. As the user navigates downwards, the search box disappears. Short-sized search bars make it difficult or the user to type or edit a long search query. This creates some inconvenience for the user and s/he quits.

To resolve this problem, one should make a search bar with an average character length of 27 characters. Plus the search boxes must be dynamic which increases in size as the user starts typing the query.

Adjust the search bars to the top of the web page so that it sticks to the top even when the user is scrolling at the bottom of the page.

Fast Loading Speed

Websites that load slowly are more prone to higher bounce rates. For each extra second that a website takes to load, the conversion reduces by 7%.

Websites that load faster are highly indexed by the Google and appear in the top search results. Optimizing the images and code and using readable font are some of the measures that would help to optimize the pages.

Responsive Design

Track the number of mobile and desktop visitors from the Google Analytics tool. Even if you get a small fraction of visitors, just switch to the responsive web designs. Responsive web designs help you cater to a larger market and increase conversions.

Engaging Web content

Make efforts to ensure that your content is both interesting and legible. The text, images and info-graphics you provide must be relevant to the search query of the user. Use bullets and headings to focus the important parts of the text. Info-graphics can be used to present the information in a better way with illustrations.

Managing Modal boxes

Pop-ups and dialog boxes appear frequently on the webpage. The user often gets frustrated with the unnecessarily appearing pop-ups and leaves the page. Suggesting blocking the modal boxes completely would be insane. What you need to do is to control the popup timing. Timely pop-ups have the potential to convert the click into a conversion.

Display the Special deals on the Webpage

If yours is a shopping portal, make sure you mention the top discounts and deals on the top of the landing page. Limited time and discount offers can help you to engage in visitors and likely lead them to make a purchase.

Online Help

Online live chatting windows will help you control the high bounce rate. You can provide help and support to the visitors and convinces them to buy or avail the service you offer. Install the chat widgets to help the customers with their queries 24*7.

Use CTA

The Call-to-Action buttons are the essential parts of the webpage. The CTA must provide all the contact details such that the visitor can contact and seek you help in case he needs.