By Sally Grisedale, [24]7
Bounce rates occur when a customer visits a web site, fails to click on anything, and then leaves the site. Evaluating your site based on bounce rates alone may not give you the results you are looking for. Perhaps visitors can quickly understand what your site is about, but they are not the right audience.
Perhaps you’ve attracted the right audience to your site, but they don’t understand your content. Many factors contribute to the effectiveness of your web site. Here are seven user experience design mistakes to avoid if you want to reduce bounce rates.
1. Avoid writing generic content and using stock photos
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An e-Commerce site is only as good as the content it provides. Today content needs to be relevant, fresh, personalized, socially aware, and brand relevant. Invest in good copy writing and great photos that match the values of your brand experience. Users will thank you by spending time on your site.
2. Skip making a poor first impression
First impressions are everything. In design terms, a bad first impression could be experienced if a site is not optimized for mobile when the user is looking at the site on their smartphone. Content has to work effortlessly across all channels (computers, smartphones, watches and tablets). Use the right design for each channel and avoid needless bounces when you do.
3. Don’t overload the user
Information overload may lead to no focus due to a lack of hierarchy of information. This is important because users only have so much patience in a world with so many choices. They will simple move along to the next retailer web site if they can’t find what they’re looking for.
4. Chaotic sites leave users cold
Well-organized layout, including the position of elements on the page in relation to one another, is key in a successful online shopping experience. Customers expect to find familiar categories that map to their own real-world retail experience. Layout needs to support the customer in their end-to-end journey from the homepage, to product pages, checkout and to the post purchase experience.
5. Unusable navigation confuses users
Navigation is key to getting users into your site. A good search engine alone cannot do this for you. Good navigation in e-Commerce is about getting to product details quickly and being able to filter them in meaningful ways. When customers cannot fathom browsing, the search field is often the place they reach for first. If a site doesn’t have a search field and good navigation, it will increase bounce rates.
6. Poor grouping makes comparing products hard
Grouping is a concept in Gestalt theory. Two of the concepts are ‘similarity’ and ‘proximity’ for grouping information. The theory is that similar items that look the same should be grouped together. When similar items are grouped in close ‘proximity’ to one another, the user can focus on evaluating their prospective purchase more efficiently, increasing engagement and reducing bounce rates.
7. Static content makes it hard for consumers to identify with the brand
Ads as well as products need to be relevant to the customer. We can no longer expect people to engage with ads or products if they are not relevant to them. Personalized content and advertising increases conversion rates and reduces bounce rates significantly. This type of digital media innovation is disrupting the linear marketing funnel of how e-Commerce has been done to date. Customer journeys are becoming a circular “consumer decision journey” according to McKinsey.
Effective e-Commerce sites that wish to avoid high bounce rates need to adjust and tailor their designs to match consumer tastes and preferences in real time. By delivering data driven, customer informed user experience design, e-Commerce sites can say good-bye to high bounce rates and hello to high conversion.
Sally Grisedale joined [24]7 in 2012 and brings 20 years of user experience and design skill helping global companies develop outstanding customer experiences for consumer products. Prior to [24]7, Sally worked as a design strategist helping web and mobile consumer software companies develop growth oriented, customer informed products. Prior to consulting, Grisedale was Senior Director of Product Design at Yahoo! where she helped Yahoo! News, Movies, Finance and Games soar to #1 in Nielson ratings. For Excite @ Home, she led the design of a new generation of mobile applications and broadband web sites.
