Bounce rate reduction of 32% with a website redesign

12 Dec 2018 Dominic Comments Off on Bounce rate reduction of 32% with a website redesign

Bounce rate is a metric most companies keep an eye on and try to reduce as best they can – basically it is the percentage amount of sessions which are hitting your website and leaving (ie bouncing). Reducing bounce rate is one of the goals of every website as it means more traffic are engaging with your site.

The more engaging and relevant your website is to the user search, the lower your bounce rate should be – The importance of bounce rate as a measurement of how effective your website and marketing materials are cannot be understated.

For example, a visitor to your home page who clicks the Back button and leaves your site immediately would be a bounce. That visit counts against your Bounce Rate. If the same visitor decided to click on your Services page and THEN leaves your site, that counts against your Exit Rate.

It should be noted that both Bounce Rate and Exit Rate are key indicators for Google when determining a site’s overall ranking.

What are typical industry bounce rates?

Every sector is different and each of these sectors may have different objectives (ie to sell a product, to get an email address, to download a white paper) so to say there are typical rates is not strictly true. In my experience, the following are typical bounce rates: Retail Sites – 20-40% Bounce Rate

• Simple Landing Pages- 70-90% Bounce Rate
• Portals- 10-30% Bounce Rate
• Service Sites- 10-30% Bounce Rate
• Content Sites- 40-60% Bounce Rate
• Lead Generation- 30-50% Bounce Rate

So, depending on where your kind of website falls within that spectrum, you should target that range of Bounce Rate (or better). Most retailers I have worked with have a bounce rate averageing between 30% to 50%.

How can you improve your bounce rate?

The less people are bouncing from your site, the more opportunity they have to fulfil your website goals. There are lots of things you can do to improve your bounce rate but don’t forget the things which may impact your bounce rate:

Negative factors

1. Pop-up ads, surveys, music, or streaming video – these conflict with user intent and can annoy existing customers
2. Landing page design – is it good enough and is it reflective of your brand with good design and quality photography?
3. Ad and landing page messages – is the message direct enough to prompt user action or is it a bit confusing?
4. Load time of pages – will customers wait for the page to load if taking too long? This is one of the most common reasons for traffic to bounce from your site.
5. Links to external sites – is traffic landing on a page which then forwards them onto another site?

Case study –  How a website redesign reduced bounce rate by 32%

I recently managed a website migration project to deliver a new website on a new platform. This was very much needed as old website was outdated, poor quality and not reflective of where the brand wanted to be at that moment in time.

What was needed was complete overhaul as well as improvement all round in functionality, design, photography, copy and overall user experience. Before undertaking the website redesign, we contacted existing customers to get an idea of the types of problems they were existing which were preventing purchase.

Old site – problems

1. Templated – bugs , issues , poor look , outdated
2. Not representative of brand – look, feel, UX etc
3. Design – use of colours, photography,
4. Navigation – not the best, could be better
5. Mobile – poor (slider) / challenging
6. Trading – average / needs improving
7. Code – conflicts with add ons / plugins
8. Cart rules – multiple / conflicting with promos

New site – requirements

1. Mobile first – 52% of traffic
2. Clean / modern design
3. Crisp lines – refined look and feel
4. Intuitive – easy to use, easy user flow
5. Simple layout – the simpler the better
6. Improved content – better, more informative
7. Ecigstore – use as a guide for look and feel
8. Improved Functionality – a few key improvements

Customer feedback

1. Re- Order – new / better re-order visibility on the website
   Better information – information needs improved across site / better content
2. Navigation – can it be improved without URL redirects
3. Compatability – lots of customers complaining about no compatability info on site / issues
4. Remember Card details – annoyed at having to enter card details every time
5. Pop up frequency – complaining of number of times pop up appearing
6. Different delivery address – lots of customer issues re delivery address
7. Previous history – easier visibility of previous history / products /
8. Mobile – needs to improve – mobile first site
9. Easy search – pre sli issues – needs to be at forefront of build
10. Loyalty – deducting before sale complete

Website Redesign results

As you can see below, the migration was definitely a success in terms of reduing bounce rate. Looking at the stats from Google Analytics pre and post migration, we saw a reduction from an average bounce rate of 40% to approx 27% ( a reduction of 32%!)

The impact of this redesign and replatfrom was an average of 2,000 extra sessions per month who were not bouncing but engaging with the website – altogether a great success!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Tags: Bounce Rate