E-commerce stores need to focus on reducing their website’s bounce rate. However, a website’s bounce rate is not regarded as important as marketing, content, and social media. It is an afterthought.
A business owner’s thoughts are set on putting their budget into SEO, Google AdWords, and a great social media strategy. Yet putting all your efforts into these campaigns can be worthless if your e-commerce store cannot handle the traffic or accommodate your target market.
Poor design, insufficient functionality, and a confusing navigation can create frustrations, increasing your bounce rate and shopping cart abandonment. This leads to poor conversion rates.
How do you improve your sales, though? How do you reduce your site’s bounce rate? The Shopify experts at Blackbelt Commerce understand the importance of keeping customers on your website so that you can make a sale. Here’s their guide on how to reduce the bounce rate on your Shopify store.
What is Bounce Rate?
Bounce rate refers to the number of site visitors who have visited one page on your site before clicking off. This is usually your home page. When you have a high bounce rate, your site is either:
- Difficult to function
- Confusing
- Not keeping your customers interested
- Unappealing regarding design and aesthetics
- Cannot handle high amounts of traffic
If you have a high bounce rate while using Google AdWords or other PPC marketing campaigns, you are wasting your money. Before you focus on your marketing efforts, you should ensure your Shopify store has none of the problems listed above.
How Do I Find My Site’s Bounce Rate?
If you aren’t sure where your bounce rate is, don’t worry. Simply use Google Analytics. You can install this into your Shopify store by:
- Signing up your store on Google
- Getting your tracking ID
- Saving it into Shopify’s Preferences
It will have a full rundown on your site. You can see how long users have been on your site, which pages they accessed, and even their demographic information.
A high bounce rate is not good for your site. When someone visits your site and then clicks away, the time they spent on your site will read 0:00. Google will flag this and use it to lower your ranking on the SERPs.
How Do I Improve My Bounce Rate?
A lower bounce rate means more people visit your website and stay on it for longer. The longer your customers stay on your website, the more likely they are to make a purchase. However, if your website is suffering from a high bounce rate, we here at Blackbelt Commerce and our team of professional Shopify web developers suggest these following steps:
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Audit Your Website for Quality and SEO
A website audit can help you determine key issues with your Shopify store. From broken links to “lost” or unanchored pages, to even other key ranking factors like site speed. By auditing your site both for SEO and for quality, you can polish it and make it more attractive to users and more user-friendly for everyone.
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Improve Landing Page Aesthetic and Quality
Once you have determined and improved the technical issues, you can focus your efforts on the aesthetics of your website. Before you make any changes, though, you need to determine the wants and needs of your target market. This can impact the color scheme, the images, and even the font.
To find out your target market, you will want to commit demographic research. Understand who you are selling to and what they like. Once you know what look you need to go for, it is time to start perusing Shopify’s ready-made themes and enlisting the help of a trusted Shopify website developer.
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Improve User Experience
If you want the best user experience, you need to invest in your site. Shopify is a great tool because of its easy-to-use interface and drag-and-drop theme customization. This, however, is not the only way to improve the user experience. The best way is to hire specialist Shopify web developers to optimize your Shopify store for you based on your needs and goals.
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Improve Your Keyword Research
Keyword strategies are important for search engines. You can target your audience more efficiently. If you target them correctly, then those who would be interested in your product or services are more likely to stay on your website. Keyword research is important for content, too.
“Never lose sight of the fact that all SEO ranking signals revolve around content of some kind.” – Duane Forrester
Here is how to do this:
- Optimize your site to rank on those keywords
- Commit to a strong, white-hat backlink campaign
- Do more with your PPC campaign
When users want something specific, they turn to search engines to find what they are looking for. This is where your keyword research really comes into play.
If you do not have a good keyword strategy in place, your PPC marketing and SEO could result in your high bounce rate.
Say you only sell three socks on your online store but hundreds of dresses. Investing in keywords involving socks won’t get you the return on your investment that you are looking for. You need to know what your strong points are and how your demographic searches.
Conclusion
Improving the bounce rate on your Shopify store takes several steps, but thankfully the end goal is a great website that is attractive, easy to use, and highly relevant. This will bring in more sales to your store and greater reach. If your efforts weren’t enough, then hire professionals who can optimize your site and even help you manage your online presence.
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We also have other terrific blog articles such as Learn about SEO, best designs practices for an e-commerce store, check out on shopify to increase conversion, and eCommerce Email Marketing. — We are Blackbelt Commerce, a TOP Shopify & BigCommerce developer.
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