11 Ways to Reduce Bounce Rate

Bad news. Your bounce rate is higher than you'd like. As an ecommerce brand, you know a high bounce rate can mean lost opportunities to engage customers and make sales.

Luckily, you've come to the right place. In this article, we'll cover practical tips to help you improve your site's user experience, page speed, content quality, and more — all of which will help reduce your website's bounce rate!

1. Try to discover why your bounce rates are so high

Before thinking about how to fix a high bounce rate, you need to diagnose what's causing it. You can start by taking a look at your analytics data on a platform like Google Analytics. If a page has a particularly high bounce rate compared to the average bounce rate on other pages of your site, take some time to examine what could be causing it – is the page slow to load? Is there an issue with its usability or design?

If you can determine a specific issue that's causing a high bounce rate on your site, great – you can go ahead and fix the issue. However, it might be difficult to see exactly what is causing the high bounce rate, or you might be looking to improve bounce rates for your site overall. If that's the case, try out the different strategies we've listed below and track the impact on the bounce rate to see what works best for your site.

2. Reduce load speed

Page load time is an incredibly important factor when trying to decrease bounce rate. Nobody is going to hang around to see what's on a landing page that takes a full 15 seconds to load.

If your ecommerce store takes too long to load, users will click away before they see any of your content – resulting in a higher bounce rate.

Here are some tips you can use to improve your site's load speed:

• Utilize a content delivery network (CDN) - A CDN is a system of servers distributed around the world that will serve content to users based on their geographical location. This means that no matter where a user is accessing your site from, they'll get the content faster.

• Optimize images - Images are often the biggest culprit when it comes to slow loading times. Make sure you compress your images and use the right format (PNG or JPEG) to ensure they load faster.

• Minimize HTTP requests - Every time a user visits your site, the browser needs to send an HTTP request for each element on the page (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, etc.). The more requests sent, the longer it will take for the page to load fully. Make sure you minimize the number of requests by combining them into one file.

3. Improve UX and Usability

If your page is confusing or difficult to navigate, users will get frustrated and leave. To improve the user experience (UX) and usability of your page, you should focus on making sure it's easy for users to find what they're looking for.

Create a positive experience for users by making sure the main navigation elements are clearly visible so that users can find their way around. Consider adding site search functionality so users can quickly search for products on your site. Improve readability by adding headings and making sure the content is easy to read by using short sentences, bullet points, and lists where appropriate.

4. Make your site responsive and mobile-friendly

With more and more users accessing sites from their mobile phones, it's essential to ensure your site is both responsive and mobile-friendly. If a page on your site takes too long to load or looks terrible on a small screen, users will likely leave without taking any action.

To make sure your site looks fine on mobile devices, use a responsive website design that automatically adjusts the layout and content to fit different screen sizes. This will ensure your page looks good regardless of whether it's being viewed from a desktop, laptop, tablet, or mobile phone.

5. Examine traffic sources

It's important to understand where your website visitors are coming from, as this can help you identify potential issues with your bounce rate. For instance, if many users that bounce are coming from social media, perhaps the content is not relevant to what the user was expecting based on your social media ads or posts. In contrast, if many of the users bouncing are coming from organic search, this could be a sign that your content doesn't meet search intent for the keywords you're targeting in search rankings.

6. Update copy and images

How long would you spend reading an outdated blog post from 2011? It's essential to make sure your copy is up-to-date, relevant, and engaging. Otherwise, you'll give people a poor user experience.

You should also pay attention to the images used on the page – if they are low quality or outdated, they may be having an effect on the bounce rate. Make sure you use relevant, high-quality images that look good regardless of which device they're being viewed on.

7. Optimize product pages

Product pages are one of the most important elements of an ecommerce website. This is where customers go to view products and make purchasing decisions, so it's essential to make sure they're optimized for maximum user engagement.

Make sure your product pages have clear and detailed descriptions, high-quality images, and customer reviews which will all help to improve user experience and reduce bounce rate. You should also include links to related products on each page, as this can help encourage customers to explore further.

8. Work on your internal linking

Internal linking can be a great way to keep users engaged with your content by leading them from one page of your site to another. For example, you could link from a blog post about fall jacket trends to a product page featuring a jacket. This will both help keep users engaged and can also lead to more sales.

9. Add Calls-to-Action (CTAs)

Calls-to-action are a great way to encourage users to take action on your site, such as buying a product or signing up for a newsletter. Make sure you add relevant and enticing CTAs throughout your page.

Here are some best practices for CTAs:

• Use strong, actionable language – "Sign Up Now" or "Buy Now"

• Use contrasting colors to make the CTA stand out from the rest of the page

• Make the CTA prominent and clearly visible on the page

10. Personalize your content

Personalization helps to engage customers, thus reducing bounce rates. Try personalizing your web pages based on customer behavior – for example, if someone has already viewed a certain product, then they could be shown related products when they visit the page.

You should also use a customer segmentation system to personalize content for different target audiences. For instance, you could show a different version of your product page to customers who are likely looking for higher-end products than those who are more budget-conscious.

11. Use A/B testing

A/B testing involves creating two versions of a page and then testing which one performs better with real users in order to determine the best design or copy. This can be a great way to find out what works best with your audience, helping you improve user experience and reduce bounce rate.

Build on an engaging site with SMS

As you can see, there are a number of different strategies you can use to create a positive user experience and reduce your ecommerce bounce rate. By focusing on improving page load speed, UX/usability, content quality, and traffic sources – as well as using personalization and A/B testing – you can significantly improve the engagement levels on your site and reduce bounce rate.

By following these tips, you'll reduce your bounce rate and encourage visitors to spend longer on your site. But even with the most engaging site in the world, people aren't going to stay on there indefinitely! Keep visitors engaged after they leave your site by prompting them to opt into SMS marketing. Use a lead magnet to encourage people to share their phone number with you - then you can use text messages to convert them into customers.

Emotive is an SMS marketing platform for ecommerce brands that are ready to grow. Book a demo today.