OK, enough about bounce rates.

Just tell me what causes them, and what I can do about ‘em.

Bouncers — those visitors who land on a website and leave without clicking through to other pages – can have an e-commerce retailer pulling his or her hair out. When a bounce rates starts increasing, where two out of every three visitors who land on the website leave without meaningfully engaging, we consider it worth trying to find out why.

First, we find the culprit behind the bounce rate. There are a lot of possible, and performing tests and experiments may help to pinpoint the problem.

Below are some of the common reasons for a high bounce rate:

  • The visitor landed on the website accidentally;
  • The website offers only a few relevant pages;
  • The visitor can’t locate or understand the site navigation;
  • The look and feel of the website is unappealing; it turns visitors away;
  • The content of the website — images, text, video — is unappealing or offensive to the customer;
  • The all-important first page takes too long to load;
  • Popups or other intrusive ads interfere with the customer’s experience;
  • The website does not render well on the device used to access it;
  • There is no call to action.

No matter what a website’s bounce rate is, the target should be to consistently lower it, and correcting the items on the list above would be a good start in this process. The idea of lowering the bounce rate is perfectly aligned with the idea of giving customers what they want – and that’s a time-honored rule of retail sales in any channel.

If customers feel that their needs will be met on an e-commerce website, they’re likely to stay on the site and continue to shop. A lower bounce rate will lead to increased sales from the hard-won traffic on an e-commerce website.

Got it? We’re always happy to sit down with a cup of coffee and explain it further!