Personalization

5 Personalization Tips to Reduce E-Commerce Bounce Rate!

August 16, 2024
10 Mins Read
Hira Faisal

Are you troubled by your online store’s bounce rate? 😵

You set up a pretty website, have Facebook and other social media ads in place, but fail to attract customers long enough to go past the first page they visit. 

Well, you came to the right place, as this blog will answer all your questions about ecommerce bounce rates, including 5 quick tips to help you reduce your online store’s e-commerce bounce rate today! 🙌

What is an Ecommerce Bounce Rate? 📈

A bounce rate is a simple metric calculated by all ecommerce businesses. It is basically a percentage of all website visitors who left the website homepage or landing page without taking any action or viewing any additional pages. Kind of like a customer who enters a shop, looks around, but leaves before buying anything.

How to Calculate Ecommerce Bounce Rate

Ecommerce bounce rate can be calculated fairly easily by dividing the number of single page visits to the website by the total number of visits to the website. The answer is multiplied by 100 to express it as a percentage, as shown below:

Calculate Ecommerce Bounce Rate

Your online business’ bounce rate depends on the type of business you are engaged in, as bounce rates vary from industry to industry. However, according to HubSpot, the average bounce rate for most websites lies between 26% and 70%, with the optimal range being between 26% and 40%. Another website, SmartBug, quotes e-commerce websites to have an average bounce rate of 33%, while Claspo states the average bounce rate for e-commerce websites to be 54.54%.

Together with other metrics like conversion rates, e-commerce bounce rates help measure the effectiveness of your e-commerce website in engaging its visitors. A high bounce rate indicates that either the website did not offer what the visitor was looking for or it drove him away due to various factors like poor website design, confusing or irrelevant content, and even slow page load time.

In any case, it is a strong indication that the e-commerce website needs to be worked on so as to meet the visitor’s requirements and engage them long enough to make a purchase!

Why Is a High Bounce Rate Bad for My Online Store?

A high bounce rate hurts your e-commerce business in three ways:

❶ It reduces an e-commerce website’s search engine rankings.

❷ It decreases an online store’s overall online presence.

❸ Lastly, high bounce rates result in fewer conversions and sales.

For the reasons mentioned above, it is imperative that steps be taken to reduce bounce rates. But how can you reduce the bounce rate of your e-commerce business?

Well, the answer lies in improving the visitor experience every time they visit your website, and the most effective strategy to enhance the user experience is through personalization!

Personalization involves tailoring the website to suit each visitor’s unique requirements. Using customer data like past purchases and demographics, companies are able to enhance the customer experience by showing them relevant website content that reflects their needs. This results not only in increased engagement but also boosts customer satisfaction and loyalty, and convinces customers to take action and make purchases. This in turn increases the website’s conversion rates and sales! 😁

Numerous studies have proven time and again that personalization is the key factor that makes a difference in customers choosing your online store and it’s products over others! According to a McKinsey report, 76% of respondents agreed to be more likely to purchase from brands that personalize, while 78% of respondents would recommend such brands to their friends and family, and 78% of surveyors would repurchase from that particular brand!

Respondents replying on personalization

Thus, when it comes to improving the user experience and engagement on your website to reduce the bounce rate, personalization is the key factor that can make all the difference!

5 Personalization Tips to Reduce E-Commerce Bounce Rate

Now that we have established that the solution to reducing e-commerce bounce rate is to use personalization, here are five ways to achieve just that!

1. Personalize the homepage

The easiest and most effective way to implement a personalization strategy to reduce bounce rates is by personalizing your homepage. This is because your homepage will be the first page that the customer lands on when he visits your website.

By using personalization, you can create multiple page variations of your website, with each variation tailored according to the needs of a particular user segment. Furthermore, different elements on the homepage can also be changed in real time to suit customer needs. These include:

✅ Hero Section

✅ Call-To-Action Buttons(CTAs)

✅ Overlays and Pop Ups

✅ Navigation Bar

For example, personalization can be used to greet first-time visitors with a welcome message along with a discount or special offer on their first purchase. This will ensure that instead of leaving the website, the customer is attracted towards exploring the website, its products, and making a purchase in order to avail of the discount or special offer, again reducing the bounce rate. Clothing brand Macy’s uses this effectively to greet new customers with a 25% discount on their first order.

Macy’s discount offer for a new customer
Source: Macy's

While Walmart personalizes its homepage for returning customers by using their usernames, and has their homepages personalized using their past purchasing history to show relevant content, as shown below:

Walmart personalized homepage
Source: Walmart

2. Display personalized product recommendations

Another sure-fire way to grab customer attention and increase website engagement, is to use customer past purchasing and browsing history to suggest relevant product recommendations. This will effectively reduce bounce rates as the customer will be attracted to take action and make purchases. Amazon uses personalization efficiently to recommend products based on customer browsing history.

Amazon product recommendation
Source: Amazon

3. Use personalized chatbots 

Another quick tip to reduce ecommerce bounce rates is to incorporate personalized chatbots on your homepage. Chatbots and live customer support are powerful tools that can have a great impact on customers considering exiting the website. This is because they offer assistance to visitors in navigating the website, and making decisions by answering their questions. This ensures longer engagement, enhances the user experience, and entices the user to take action.

Personalizing the chatbots so that they address customers with their username and help the customers out with reference to their past purchases, can take this to the next level, thereby greatly reducing the bounce rates!

One of the biggest online makeup retailers, Sephora, uses this technique effectively to offer its customers 24/7 customer support with an FAQ chatbot, because it understands that it’s customers require guidance when deciding which makeup products to buy!

Sephora customer support example
Source: Outgrow

4. Personalize your search page results

Another way to reduce your ecommerce bounce rates is to make your search results easy to use and personalized. In this fast paced world, more and more customers want to enjoy a seamless and quick online digital experience. Therefore, in order to increase engagement, you should facilitate the users as much as possible. This includes placing the search bar on top of your homepage in an easily distinguishable colour and layout. Furthermore, using advanced AI tools, you can also offer smart search, which uses customer data to suggest products based on past purchasing history as well as the products the customer is searching for in the search bar. Items such as those purchased in the past, complimentary items, wishlist items, and so on. Sephora uses this technique to show returning customers their past search history in the search bar.

 Sephora search page result
Source: Sephora

5. Incorporate exit intent popups

Even if, after providing all of the above personalized services, your customer is about to exit your website without carrying out any other action or visiting any other page, you can use exit intent pop ups as a last resort to grab customer attention and keep them engaged on your website.

Exit intent pop ups are pop ups that are displayed on your website when the customer is about to leave the website or when no action is taken for a long time. This is carried out using exit intent technology that tracks the customer’s mouse movement to determine their actions on the website and when they are about to leave the website. At that time, a pop up flashes on the screen in easy to read format that is also visually striking, offering a special offer or discount, or even asking for the email address to subscribe to the mailing list. This ensures that abandoning customers return back to the website to avail the discount and make a purchase, or sign up to receive personalized emails.

Using personalization tactics, the exit intent pop ups can display offers or special discounts based on customer past purchases for returning customers.

New customers can be shown personalized social proof in the pop ups to build credibility and lure them back to make a purchase, or even offered special offers. In both cases, they play a significant role in increasing engagement and reducing the bounce rate! According to Conversion Sciences, “around 10 to 15% of visitors can be saved using exit intent pop ups”.

Kissmyketo.com uses commanding phrases and eye catching CTA to grab its abandoning customers attention. Additionally, the time limit creates a sense of urgency to get the customers to act quickly!

Keto exit intent popup
Source: Keto

How Relevic Reduce E-Commerce Bounce Rate with Personalization

Using the five tips effectively can greatly enhance your website’s user experience, lower your ecommerce bounce rates, and drive sales!

Relevic allows you to implement all these tactics effectively. Their easy to use drag and drop editor and campaign creator allow you to effectively personalize your website using different campaigns and page variations, and they also allow you to design personalized CTAs to suit different user’s needs.

But the best part, you ask? They offer many free services, and their drag and drop editor provides all these personalization features without touching a single line of code! So don’t waste time, click below to get a demo of our services, and start your personalization journey with Relevic today!

Explore Relevic by booking a consultancy today and help your business reduce its bounce rate today!
Click here for Free Consultancy

Final Thoughts

In this fast paced world full of oversaturated digital markets, it is imperative that you evaluate your business’ e-commerce bounce rate and implement the above-mentioned tips to reduce it as low as possible while simultaneously enhancing the user experience to drive more sales and conversions. Without it, your online store will not be able to compete amid the cutthroat competition online. And if you don't personalize, then your competitors surely will, and it could be a deciding factor why customers choose your competitors over you!

So use Relevic and start your personalization journey to reduce your e-commerce bounce rates today!

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