David J Brown, CEO and co-Founder of ecommerce conversion company Ve, discusses techniques to reduce bounce rates on ecommerce sites.
“If you build it they will come” – the oft-misquoted maxim from Field of Dreams is undoubtedly a phrase many online business owners have heard from friends and well-wishers as they start their business. Sadly, as many online businesses soon find out, driving visitors to a website is one thing, making them spend money is an entirely different story. A website can have the best SEO in the world and still fall victim to a high bounce rate or chronic shopping cart abandonment.
At its most basic, a high bounce rate normally indicates that an ecommerce site is failing to resonate with its target demographic. This usually has one of two root causes – potential customers didn’t find what they needed or they found the site difficult or irritating to use.
Sluggish page load time is the single best method of scaring off visitors. The patience of the average person has reduced dramatically in recent years, so bringing a site’s loading times up to speed is a must. Research by marketing analytics firm KISSmetrics found that 40% of shoppers abandon a site if it takes more than a mere three seconds to load and 27% of 18-34 year olds will abandon a page if it takes anything over one second to load. Yes, really, one second.
One of the easiest ways to speed up webpage load times is to optimise the site’s images. Using an image that is larger than it will be on the page means that an incredible amount of pointless data is being transferred. By using the correct dimensions in the source code saves all the time of transferring data and then the back and forth of resizing, repainting and shuffling the page to fit everything in.
A simple webpage design has several benefits. Not only does it generally look better and is easier for consumers to navigate, but it also speeds up load times. According to Yahoo, 80% of a webpage’s load time is spent downloading all the different elements that comprise it – style sheets, images, scripts, flash etc. An individual HTTP request is made for each one of these elements. Inevitably, the more pieces of the puzzle, the longer it will take to put together.
Confused consumers are a real conversion killer. Any new visitor has taken a leap of faith by visiting your website. It’s up to you to validate that decision and if the website doesn’t manage that, then they’re likely to leave. Layout plays a huge role, with clear navigation being the ultimate aim – the user needs to know what their next step should be, whether that’s to check-out or browse products. Eradicate any of this troublesome doubt by expressing clear purpose on your page, with overt value proposals, clear messaging and calls to action.
From a design point of view, ensure the website is easy to read — take into account the font size, spacing, and colouring. This is especially important for customers browsing via their mobiles.
High bounce rates can also be an indication that visitors aren’t being supplied with what they expect to find. To find out if your landing pages are missing your customers’ expectations, consider the following questions:
• Is your messaging consistent with the traffic source?
• Is your content meeting the visitor’s requirements, rather than just saying what you want to say? In other words, are you explaining the benefits of your offering concisely and effectively?
• Is there an issue with information layout? The content may be too difficult to absorb quickly.
• If after running this audit you feel the content is right, then it may be the quality of traffic that needs to be improved. In this case, broader advertising campaigns (search, social media, email etc.) should be reassessed and redrawn to bring in the right kind of customers.
In a handful of circumstances, a higher bounce rate is to be expected. If a visitor bounces immediately after visiting your blog or ‘contact us’ page, it does not necessarily constitute a failure.
On these pages, a better measure of how well content has been absorbed is the average time spent on the page. The higher the amount of time spent, the more meaningful the engagement.
Optimising your website’s design and load time, and checking the quality of traffic is just the tip of the iceberg when reducing your site’s bounce rate and improving its conversion rate. There is also technology available that will help make customers engage more with your site, return and spend money. However, to see meaningful gains, it’s important to make sure your website is adhering to best practices, whilst considering how these solutions can help you with other factors causing abandonment on your site, such as price comparison shopping or a long path to purchase. Work by the maxim that ‘traffic is vanity, but conversion is sanity’ and you will be on the right track to building a successful ecommerce business.
By David J Brown
CEO and co-Founder
Ve
http://www.veinteractive.com/
