What is an Ecommerce Bounce Rate?

Bounce Rate is the percentage of visitors who leave your site after viewing just one page.

So, if your bounce rate is 67%, then only 33 of every 100 site visitors make it past the first page they visit.

On an ecommerce site, in particular, this is clearly Not A Good Thing because a transaction can’t complete without the customer visiting at least 3 pages while placing an order (the item page, the shopping basket and the checkout).

What contributes to bounce rates?

For ecommerce sites, customers 'bounce' when they :

• Press the back button of their browsers
• Close the browser window or tab
• Open a new tab or window
• Type in a different URL and go on to another site
• Spend only a little time on a page

Why do customers bounce from sites?

Ecommerce customers may bounce for several reasons including :

• The ecommerce site is just too slow
• The site has not been optimized for mobile devices
• The item is out of stock or not price competitive
• Poor item photos and description
• The presented delivery options are not convenient
• The visitor can’t find what they want (or find it quickly enough)
• The site is too difficult to navigate (hidden menus, badly designed menus, badly defined Department headings)
• Poor graphic design quality
• Long sign-up or checkout process
• Window shopping (shop hopping)
• Landed on your site by mistake
• They simply got distracted and left

Working together, we can attack the bounce triggers on this list (and more). Some of them should already be dealt with and just require regular maintenance. Admittedly, as good as we are, the last two seem a bit beyond our reach!

What could I expect my bounce rate to be?

The global average bounce rate in ecommerce is currently around 60%.

If you were operating at a 36% bounce rate or lower, you’d be among the very top performers (like Amazon and eBay).

So we would advise that targeting 55% (or lower) would be a good ambition for you to have right now.

What could decreasing my current bounce rate mean for my sales revenue?

EXAMPLE

If you made £1,000,000 of online sales revenue in the last 365 days, then that was generated by just 33% of your visitors (because 67% bounced).

So it stands to reason that if you reduce your bounce rate, you will increase your sales revenues and your overall profitability.

Here’s an example of what a 1% drop in bounce rate could generate in sales revenue ...

If ‘A’ = Last 365 days revenue online (A = £1,000,000) and ‘B’ is equal to the Last 365 days average bounce rate (B = 67%)

Then ...

A / (100 - B) = 1% of A

Therefore, lowering the bounce rate by 1% would create the opportunity to generate an additional £30,303 of sales revenue.

Dropping the bounce rate to 55% (from 67%) would increase that potential revenue increase to £363,636.