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Bounce rates are the first indication of your website’s relevance to the users.

It is the percentage of people who land on a page and leave without performing a specific action: staying for a certain amount of time, clicking on a few links, or purchasing.

A high bounce rate signals that something on your ecommerce store isn’t quite right for your customers - the content is irrelevant, the shopping experience is poor, or products poorly match the search query.

Luckily, improving the site’s relevance can significantly lower the bounce rate. How to achieve that?

Let’s find out how ecommerce search can help you reduce bounce rates.

43% of all website visitors head straight to the search box as soon as they land on your website.

That’s why you have to make it work right.

If your e-shop search is slow, inaccurate, or confusing, you can increase customer frustration. This leads to visitors leaving your site without taking any action or exploring more products.

High bounce rates indicate user dissatisfaction, which can be mitigated by improving search accuracy and relevance [1].

Another study emphasized that users’ interaction with relevant search results significantly reduces bounce rates and enhances user engagement [2].

The default search (that comes with your CMS) is not enough. It lacks too many critical features to ensure a smooth user experience.

Therefore, introducing an effective and converting ecommerce search solution (like LupaSearch) is the first step in reducing a site’s bounce rates.

After that, make sure to exploit the potential of your ecommerce search. Here’s how.

Continuously improve ecommerce search relevance

Test to see if your site search accurately predicts users’ search intent and matches the search results accordingly.

Choose an AI-powered ecommerce search that gets to the core of search queries and delivers precisely what the user is looking for.

Get back to the statistics and search reports frequently to continuously improve the search relevance.

An AI-powered ecommerce search can deliver precisely what the user is looking for, thereby improving relevance and reducing bounce rates [3].

Add synonyms

Users often have different ways of naming the same product.

That’s why expanding the search vocabulary can provide users with more accurate results and reduce the chances of bounce rates caused by mismatches between user intent and search results.

Think of your synonyms or use past search data to get new ideas.

This technique aligns with findings that relevant and diverse search results can improve user retention [4].

Implement an auto-suggest feature that provides real-time suggestions as users type in the search box.

It helps users instantly find the needed products, reduces the chances of misspelled queries, and prevents users from getting zero-results pages.

A study found that auto-suggestions can significantly improve user interaction and reduce bounce rates by guiding users to relevant content efficiently [5].

The more immersed the user is in the e-shop environment, the lower the bounce rate and the higher the conversion rate.

Stay ahead of the competition by analyzing search data and identifying emerging trends. For instance, you might notice a sudden spike in certain color phone cases.

Boost trending products higher on the search results page and expand your assortment accordingly.

Identifying patterns in user searches and adapting to them can proactively improve search relevance and reduce bounce rates [6].

Optimize for mobile

60.9% of the US population shop on their mobile phones. Disregarding mobile experience can lead to poor bounce and conversion rates.

Ensure your search box and search results are well-designed and easy to navigate on smaller screens to reduce bounce rates and enhance user experience [7].

Reduced bounce rates - growing business success

Reducing ecommerce rates can ultimately lead your business to long-term success and steady growth for your business.

Invest in an AI-driven ecommerce search like LupaSearch and effectively reduce the bounce rates on your e-shop.

The LupaSearch team is here for your success.

Request a free demo today, and let’s work together toward your business success.

References

  1. Sculley, D., Malkin, R., Basu, S., & Bayardo, R. (2009). Predicting bounce rates in sponsored search advertisements. , 1325-1334. https://doi.org/10.1145/1557019.1557161.

  2. Dolma, Y., Kalani, R., Agrawal, A., & Basu, S. (2021). Improving Bounce Rate Prediction for Rare Queries by Leveraging Landing Page Signals. Companion Proceedings of the Web Conference 2021. https://doi.org/10.1145/3442442.3453540.

  3. Jansen, B., & Molina, P. (2006). The effectiveness of Web search engines for retrieving relevant ecommerce links. Inf. Process. Manag., 42, 1075-1098. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ipm.2005.09.003.

  4. Anand, A., Kumar, S., Kumar, N., & Shah, S. (2023). CADENCE: Offline Category Constrained and Diverse Query Generation for E-commerce Autosuggest. Proceedings of the 29th ACM SIGKDD Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining. https://doi.org/10.1145/3580305.3599787.

  5. Furtner, K., Mandl, T., & Womser-Hacker, C. (2015). Effects of Auto-Suggest on the Usability of Search in eCommerce. , 178-190. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17948

  6. Tsagkias, M., King, T., Kallumadi, S., Murdock, V., & Rijke, M. (2020). Challenges and research opportunities in eCommerce search and recommendations. ACM SIGIR Forum, 54, 1 - 23. https://doi.org/10.1145/3451964.3451966.

  7. Agustina, H. (2020). Impact of Usability to User Experience on blanja.com Site. International Journal of Applied Business and International Management. Impact of Usability to User Experience on blanja.com Site (researchgate.net)