What’s Causing My Bounce Rate? 6 Common Causes

May 26, 2022
Written by Ampry

If you’re an online marketer or an eCommerce business, then high bounce rates are a reason for concern.Imagine being a retail shop owner and seeing your potential customers come and go without buying. Most likely it’s because your shop is unorganized, or because something else turned them off.The same can happen on your website. And while high bounce rates are not unusual on websites, it is entirely possible to convert those who left into customers in a few steps.

What’s a Good Bounce Rate?

Before we dive into the reasons for having a high bounce rate, it might be worth considering what a good and bad bounce rate is.The statistics for bounce rates can be found in Google Analytics. It’s one of the most telling statistics for the effectiveness of your site.The bounce rate on the vast majority of websites is between 26% and 70%.If you’re in that ballpark, then you can consider yourself to be somewhere in the average. However, a bounce rate of 55% or higher can be a cause for concern. If you have a bounce rate higher than 70%, then alarm bells should be ringing in your head. If that’s the case, something very obvious is going wrong.A good bounce rate, on the other hand, is 50% or lower. It’s not very common to see a site have a bounce rate of lower than 25%, though.

Reasons for High Bounce Rate on Your Site

Let’s discuss some of the most common reasons why you might have a high bounce rate on your website and how you can fix them.

1. Technical Errors

One of the most common reasons for high bounce rates is technical errors on your site. This might include a bunch of different errors that might be happening, such as:

  • Error 404 - site not loading
  • Unresponsive elements on your site
  • Images not loading
  • Buttons not working
  • Broken links
  • Menus not loading or working

All of these can be highly annoying. If you’ve experienced some of these before, then you know how difficult it makes it to stay on the site.Technical errors on ecommerce sites are not uncommon. But they’re also distracting and pushing your customers away from buying from you, so you’ll need to get them fixed ASAP. One major obstacle is knowing that these errors even exist—so if you have high bounce rates, it might be time to double-check whether everything is working correctly. These errors can be glaringly obvious at times, but they could be subtle problems, too.Sometimes, these technical errors can simply be fixed by fixing one of your plugins or updating your JavaScript, or by pushing through some overdue updates.

2. Slow Loading Speeds

There’s one thing we can all agree on: slow loading speeds are annoying. Many people instantly leave if a site takes too long to load.Research shows that when a site takes 5 seconds or longer to load, users will start to leave.

And this is especially the case for eCommerce websites. Customers can quickly get impatient when a site takes longer to load. Slow loading times are a sign that you’re not trustworthy, so the customers will run and take their money elsewhere.Ideally, your page should not take longer than 5 seconds to load. You’ll want it to load instantly, or at the very most, in 3 seconds or less.Page speed is also one of the key metrics that Google uses to rank websites, so you’ll always want to improve this aspect, anyway.Fixing your site’s loading speed can be tricky, and it’ll take time. But it’s one of the best investments you can make. The faster your site loads, the better it will rank, and the lower the bounce rates will be.

3. Poor CTA Placement

The CTA buttons are perhaps the most important parts of your website if you’re selling products online. You want the “Buy Now” buttons in the right places, so you’ll need to think strategically about what works for you. You can do some testing to see if you can decrease your bounce rates by placing your CTA buttons elsewhere. You can also use some great tools that every marketer should use to improve bounce rates. Heatmaps and other tools can give you a clearer idea of whether your CTA buttons are working as they should be.You want to place your buttons in places where most of your customers are going to look. They should easily stand out from the rest of the site and they should also be in a place where everyone is going to look first when they’re on your site.Take some time and consider where you place the CTA buttons. You will need to test this around a bit to see what works, too.

4. Bad or Irrelevant Copy

If you’ve got the technical details nailed down, then there might also be other things causing a high bounce rate on your site.One of the most obvious things is bad or irrelevant copy. This includes product descriptions or content on your site. If it is not enticing to your customers, then they’re not going to be prompted to buy from you.Too many eCommerce site owners brush this aspect off thinking it’s not necessary to have good copy. But your website copy should be:

  • Engaging
  • Persuasive
  • Clear and informative

Imagine copy on your site being your 24/7 online salesman, working for you and persuading your prospects to buy from you. So if your salesman isn’t doing a good job at selling your products, you’re not going to see great results.Focus on providing the best copy possible for your products and your content. To do this, you might want to use some feedback from either your customers or a third party who will help you fix it for you.

5. You Don’t Appear Trustworthy

According to some marketing statistics, a whopping 84% of users said they wouldn’t purchase from a seller that doesn’t look trustworthy.It makes sense; would you go into a shop where the seller looks like they would rather steal your money than sell you a good product?Of course not! The same thing applies to eCommerce websites. If your site looks spammy, cheap, untrustworthy, dishonest, or low-quality, then you’re going to lose prospects. First impressions matter a lot, so you will want to do everything you can to appear as trustworthy as possible.It’s not all about having a visually appealing site. There are also other things you can do to appear more trustworthy, such as:

  • Remove unnecessary pop-ups, ads, and other distractions
  • Use high-quality images
  • Display testimonials and positive customer reviews

At the same time, you should continue to monitor your site through heatmaps and other tools to see if any of the above elements are distracting your customers.

6. Poor User/Mobile Experience

Your site should be effortless to navigate and find products. This means having good user experience should be one of your priorities.Buyers might be turned off if your site isn’t easy to navigate and they can’t find what they’re looking for.

You should make it easy to navigate through your site by having clear and organized menus, categories for products, and by not having unnecessary extra subpages or sites on your website.You should also not forget to include all the necessary information on your site, such as information about you, the products, contact information, and more.In addition, you’ll want to provide a similarly high level of experience on your mobile site, too. Today, the majority of your buyers will be using a mobile device to buy from you, so make sure you make your site mobile-friendly, too.

Optimization Takes Time and Patience

If you have high bounce rates and you feel like throwing in the towel, then stop right there!You should know that almost every online marketer has had similar problems as you at one point or another. Of course, it can be frustrating to see your prospects leave without taking any action on your site, but you can improve it.If you take the time and effort needed to test what works and what doesn’t, then you can see a sharp improvement in bounce rates in a matter of weeks.And if you’re not sure where to start, we’re here to help you out. Schedule a call with Ampry now and we’ll help you fine-tune your site and provide you with tips so that you get the most conversions out of your products and site.

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