The Influences of Bounce Rates on ROI
An often-overlooked facet of on-line marketing, both PPC and SEO, is the bounce rate of the web site. For the uninitiated, bounce rate simply refers to the number of visitors that land on the site, but only visit one page. Generally speaking, any bounce rate under 30% (meaning 70% of your visitors hit more than one page) is considered very good. Statistically, that may be true, but don’t wrap yourself in the comfort of your 29% bounce rate! While click-through-rates and back links are tools of the trade for SEO and PPC experts, they simply aren’t equipped to deal with bounce rates, which are more a factor of design.
The truth of the matter is that your bounce rate has immediate ramifications on the ROI of any marketing venture. For example, let’s look at a few affordable modern furniture retailers – stores like West Elm, Eurway and ModernFurniture.com. West Elm is a widely known furniture catalog and design company and, not surprisingly, it has the lowest bounce rate of the three because of its design. As of this writing the 1-month bounce rates (according to Alexa.com) for the three sites are as follows:
West Elm: 21%
Eurway: 31.6%
ModernFurniture: 41.5%
Be aware that ModernFurniture is ranked #1 organically for the highly competitive search term “modern furniture.” They are obviously doing something right to obtain such a high SEO ranking. What is easy to overlook, however, is the fact West Elm can expect similar or better returns with 25% less traffic! Why? Consider this: for every hundred visitors to ModernFurniture, less than 59 stay to shop because of the ridiculously high (industry-wise) bounce rate. To obtain that same 59 shoppers, West Elm only needs 75 unique visitors. The savings grow from there! Every dollar West Elm spends on marketing yields a 25% higher return simply because their site is better designed to retain the traffic yielded by any marketing efforts. (Note: This article is looking only at web metrics. West Elm actually outsells most modern furniture retailers due to catalog and off-line marketing initiatives.)
So why is West Elm’s bounce rate so much better? That is actually pretty easy to see once you look at all three web sites. Assuming you were in the market for a new modern bed, look at all three homes pages and determine how you would rank the three sites on these metrics:
- How appealing is the color palette of the web page?
- Which web site has the fewest elements distracting you from buying furniture?
- Which web site’s navigation is easiest to understand?
Few could dispute that fact that all three answers are the same: West Elm is best, Eurway is next and ModernFurniture is last. Every customer that visits those sites thinks that same thing, as evidenced by the bounce rates.
So, look at your site and your competitors. How can you improve your ROI by reducing your bounce rate?
