What is a bounce rate and how does it matter to your online shop’s rankings?

Published on February 25, 2012 What is a bounce rate and how does it matter to your online shop’s rankings?

As online shopping becomes more competitive, store owners need to look more closely at the things that get more qualified traffic coming to the store. Without targeted traffic you won’t get the sales you need, but neither will you get the search engine rankings.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) done for SEOs sake will only benefit you in the short run. In the long run you will lose. Because people will come to your site and leave again. This matters because whether you like it or not Google knows when a user has searched for something and then comes back a few minutes later to search for the same thing again (and clicks on a different site). Why would Google rank a business highly that everybody leaves after visiting?

How is the bounce rate determined? Bounce rate is defined as the percentage of visitors to the site that leave without viewing any other pages, either closing the browser, timing out the session or going to another website. Search engines like Google can’t “see” all of those things happening as they can’t spy into an individual’s computer. So search engines most likely measure the bounce rate as the percentage of people who search for something click through on a link and then don’t find what they want – so either click the back button to click on another link in the same search list or open a new browser and repeat the search (choosing a different result when they are displayed).

The upshot of this is that the quality of presetation of content on your website matters as much as the topic of the content and the search phrases that you use. Don’t overload your website with keywords even if it fits within the “keyword density ratio” that your SEO company tells you to write the page with. Don’t stuff keywords into any page, and you’ll have no reason to be penalised.

Here are some common mistakes we see businesses make that increase their “bounce rate” (how many people quickly leave on the page they arrive on):

• Mistake: Power Stuff their meta tags with every word under the sun that describes their business – even if those words aren’t used anywhere on their page/site
• Mistake: Squash jargon into their headings or footer links just for the sake of it
• Mistake: Create meaningless pages just to have a title with a commonly searched term in them
• Mistake: Using prominent advertising to another site (this might make you some money from Adsense but not for long! And it does NOT help conversion rates in your online shop. This is a tactic best suited to a high traffic blog – if people want to advertise on their online shop site, we suggest you move your advertising location to somewhere that’s not so prominent it devalues your website e.g. the bottom of the centre panel or the bottom of a side bar location)
• Mistake: Use flashing icons and clip art in your site header – it isn’t appropriate in professional business documents so don’t use it in your website either!
• Mistake: Too many fonts, too many colours, or anything else garish! If you wouldn’t put it in the window of a shopping mall don’t overwhelm your customers
• Mistake: Giant images that take too long to load
• Mistake: Not correcting errors. If something in your shop is not set up correctly,t  then get it set up properly. Don’t just leave it. Use the technical support team from your shopping cart software provider. After all, they’re there to help and you pay for it.
• Mistake: Splash screens. Use them in software, not on the web
• Mistake: Flash and Music. It’s too slow to load (even with loading progress animations it’s annoying) and annoying when it gets there
• Mistake: Ignoring your competition. A reason people might leave your site is that they have previously browsed a competitors website and yours is painfully inferior and leaves them feeling uneasy about buying from you. Consider your competitors and ensure your site feels as professional as theirs. If the site can’t convince you as the store owner to buy from them, how will it convince someone who doesn’t even know you?
• Mistake: Not including REAL testimonials or reviews if you have them. Not all businesses collect reviews or it may not be appropriate. But if this is appropriate for your industry, and you have real reviews (not ones you have paid for or written yourself) then display them as it may ease people into going further in your site. If you don’t have reviews or don’t wish to do so as part of your marketing strategy, then we suggest you promote SECURITY as that’s a major reason that people won’t buy from an online shop.
• Mistake: Only thinking about what not to include. You also need to think about the cusomer who will be BUYING from your site (not just the window shopper) and what will make them buy. Profile them, Appeal to them, Invite Them, Convert them. In advertising they call this “AIDA” (Getting Attention, Interest, Desire, and then Action)

There are hundreds of things you can do to improve bounce rates for your online shop, and if you are avoiding these common mistakes you’re on the right track to keeping people on your site for longer, getting them to view more pages, and buy your products.