How to Reduce Bounce Rates & Increase AOV by Optimizing Product Pages

Therefore, high bounce rates are often considered as the killer of customer engagement, lead generation, conversion rate, sales, and ultimately revenue.

To help you reduce bounce rate and increase revenue, we’re going to cover the definition of bounce rate, industry benchmark stats, and most importantly, helpful, actionable tips 💡! Keep reading to get started...

Understanding e-commerce bounce rates

According to Google and Shopify, your bounce rate is defined as the percentage of site visitors that land on a page and only look at that said page and then leave—or bounce from—your site immediately without interacting with it. This metric can reveal a lot about how well your e-commerce site is doing in engaging and converting potential customers 👀.

A high bounce rate tends to be considered a negative thing. However, there's no fixed standard for qualifying a good or bad bounce rate, as every industry has its own benchmarks.

As the chart below presents, according to the latest data from CXL, the average e-commerce bounce rate falls between 20% - 45%, which is actually lower than other kinds of websites.

E-commerce bounce rates also vary across different devices. For Shopify-powered sites, the average bounce rate is 47.5% for mobile and 38.7% for desktop.

Based on the stats above, if the bounce rate of your e-commerce store is higher than 45%, it could be a worrisome sign, and you should take some actions to fix it 🛠 .

Optimizing product pages with personalized recommendations

When it comes to your e-commerce site, there’re many areas you can focus on to reduce bounce rates. We've decided to focus on your product page here, as it’s often the entry point of visitors coming from Google as well as the final barrier between a visitor and a paying customer 🛒.

High bounce rates on your product pages are particularly painful to your business 😨. As said earlier, if customers are bouncing from your product pages, they're ultimately not buying anything from you.

So, you want to keep them there even if the product on the page is not exactly what they’re looking for. Now, how can you do this?

Provide other relevant, interesting product recommendations 💡!

Doing so will make customers more likely to stick around and continue their journey on your e-commerce site, increasing the likelihood of conversion 🎉.

Here’s an example of how Vitarock uses Clerk to present relevant product recommendations to a customer viewing the product page for a Dry Shampoo:

As displayed, Clerk makes it easy for Vitarock to automatically show this customer not only great alternative dry shampoo products but also other popular, trending products customers are purchasing through our AI-powered personalized product recommendations banners.

Clerk's algorithm is able to identify the best products to recommend, based on a number of behavioral data points (visitor's click history, order history, search history, etc.) as well as product data points (best sellers, trending, best-cross sell products, etc.). This ensures consumers receive only relevant, personalized recommendations that have a high likelihood to convert. This way you can easily optimize all your product pages with high-converting product recommendations.

📄 Read our support article to learn more about how you can utilize Clerk Recommendation sliders to reduce bounce rates and optimize conversions on your product pages.

Technical optimization: Speeding up your site

Another main reason e-commerce websites experience high bounce rates is due to slow load speed. Thus, another technical tip from us is to make sure your e-commerce site is extra quick so customers don't become impatient and leave 🚀!

Imagine this: A visitor is super excited to buy a product from your webshop, but they have to wait for your slow-loading product page 😩. Most likely, they will navigate away because they know there must be other websites selling the same or alternative products, and they don’t have the patience to wait for a slow site to load. Just like that, you lost a potential buyer.

In fact, numerous statistics have demonstrated the significance of site speed to e-commerce business success. A study by Akamai shows that the bounce rate increases by 103% when a web page load time delays for 2 seconds. Furthermore, 53% of mobile site visitors will leave a page that takes longer than three seconds to load.

Besides being a critical factor that affects user experience and conversion rates, page speed is also a confirmed ranking factor for Google Search 📈. But don't freak out. You can use Google’s PageSpeed Insights to check your web page performance and receive suggestions to make that page faster.

If you want to learn more about other technical SEO tactics, check out our beginner-level, actionable e-commerce SEO guide to boosting online sales.

Read more on how Clerk helps other e-commerce sites to achieve business growth through reducing bounce rate and increasing sales 🥳:

• How Vitarock Uses Clerk to Optimize Bounce Rates and Conversions
• How Friluftsland Maximizes Marketing Efforts with Clerk
• Natural Baby Shower Improves CX & Increases Conversions by 349%

Being the world's #1 rated e-commerce personalization platform, Clerk.io helps 2,500+ stores worldwide improve their CX and grow sales. Get started by talking to one of our specialists today.