Written by: Ryan Walsh
Date: 01/07/2026

Table of Contents:

• What does a website’s bounce rate mean?
• Why it’s important to improve your page load speeds
• Carefully consider your website’s UX and format the content so that it’s more readable
• Make sure that the content marketing answers the shopper’s question
• How our e-commerce agency can help

A whopping $83.98 billion was spent on SEO in 2026. Therefore, digital marketing is big business, and every website visitor needs to be encouraged and persuaded to become a paying customer.

But what happens when you have thousands of organic visitors arriving at your website, yet sales are low?

What happens when across all of the product and service pages, the average visitor is only visiting one page?

Well, this could be due to a sky-high bounce rate plaguing your e-commerce store.

But do not fear, we are a UK-based digital marketing agency that has decades of experience. We are therefore the experts, and in this guide, we will dispense our knowledge and wisdom on how to reduce a business’s bounce rate.

 

What does “bounce rate” mean?

Well, in a nutshell, it’s when a shopper or visitor, as some people refer to them, visits your website. However, instead of having a good browse around the website, they bounce; they leave after landing on the first page.

Now, this “bouncing” means that many agencies deem the page or website to have low engagement.

However, as with everything to do with search engine optimisation, it’s not that simple. The reason being, imagine you have written a mammoth 10,000-word article; you’ve knocked it out of the park in terms of how you have answered the user’s query. So, this beggars the question, why would they go else-where? Perhaps the question has been answered there and then, therefore you have saved the visitor the leg-work of having to go elsewhere.

Therefore, the point being made here is, well the bounce rate being a problem does very much depend on the page. If it’s a page actually selling an item, a product page, with a super-high bounce rate, well this could be a problem. It should raise the eye-brows as to why shoppers are not adding an item to their cart, proceeding to another page.

However, if it’s a piece of content marketing that’s dispensing advice, say to one of the most commonly asked questions that you get asked, then that might not just be so much of a problem.

Because, well, that set of visitors may well be further down the buyer’s funnel, meaning at this moment in time there just researching the idea of buying an item. They are just looking for answers regarding the product or service.

What is the average bounce rate?

E-commerce 20–45% is reported to be around

However, in our vast experience, we would have to say that the bounce rate greatly depends on your business sector. For example, the bounce rate on a high value product page will normally be higher than a page which is selling a low value product. The reason being is simple, shoppers tend to shop around more, when the product is more expensive.

 

Improve your e-commerce websites page load speeds

If shoppers have to wait around for a page to load, well, they often just don’t. they leave, so in our vast experience of e-commerce SEO, we would have to say that page load speeds do effect bounce rates.

Patience is not a virtue that a lot of us have.

Therefore, if your website is slow, not only is the bounce rate likely to be higher, but also, your likely to have lower organic rankings. That’s because Google uses page load speeds as a ranking factor. What this means is that Google uses in excess of 200 various ranking factors, that’s to determine how strong a businesses search engine optimisation is. One of those ranking factors is page load speeds.

 

Dwell times and time on page

For those that have been reading this article closely, they will have noted that we have said, that sometimes, some pages naturally have a high bounce rate. For example, a really long blog post, which answers the shopper’s question on one page, may have a high bounce rate, just because the answer is so in-depth.

Therefore, rather than the shopper having to “pogo-stick” and find an answer elsewhere, they have their answer, answered there and then on that one page. Therefore, what you might want to check instead is the dwell time on the page.

For example, a blog post might have a very high bounce rate, but if the dwell time or “time on page” is high, then this still shows that you have an engaged visitor. For example, if the bounce rate is 90% but the average shopper is still reading that post for 7 minutes plus, the page still has high engagement.

 

Format the content marketing so its more readable

Even if a shopper really wants to find an answer to a query, sometimes they can be put off if there is simply a huge amount of text to read.

Also, the writing style, well it could be a bit boring, and overly technical when sometimes there’s no reason to write that level of detail.

Therefore, the best marketing agencies in the world, they will tell you, that you have to write content marketing that has a very high Google E-EAT score. However, at the same time, you have to make that information intrusting to read. This is where offering a good “user experience” is important. For example, the web design, should be used, to offer a better user experience. For example, bold headings, font that is easy to read, and also mobile devices, such as I-Phone should load the page quickly.

 

Should be relevant and don’t go off point

We would say that another common reason why a bounce rate can often be high, is because the content marketing doesn’t answer the query.

For example, sometimes a blog post will have a very high word count, but still not answer the shopper’s question. Therefore, sometimes blog posts are just marketing waffle.

The content marketing which ranks high on Google, plus, also which answers a shopper’s question is the pages and blog posts which have a high Google EEAT score.

EEAT stands for experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. Now, if you write a blog post, and it’s written either by an expert on that subject, or will the help of an expert, normally that work will be helpful to someone seeking an answer to that query.

Therefore, this is why pages, which have a high Google E-EAT score tend to have a lower bounce rate.

Therefore, if your business, is just writing marketing waffle, then not only will this have a sky-high bounce rate, but also the work tends to rank low in terms of Google’s organic SERP’s.

 

Split testing and making gradual improvements

What the top e-commerce businesses do, is they use something called A/B testing. This is also commonly called “split testing”. Now, what it can be used is to see if you can reduce websites bounce rate. For example, the web designers may add some more internal links, and they could use A/B testing to see if that reduces the bounce rate.

For those that do know, split testing is widely used in e-commerce SEO. The reason being is one half of the shoppers will see one design; the other half of the shoppers will see the altered design. This allows you to then measure bounce rates, and dwell times. Perhaps for example, its clear as day, that the page with the improvements made, such as having more internal links, perhaps that page then has much lower bounce rate.

 

What methods does your agency use to lower bounce rates?

The main methods that we use, we have already outlined above.

However, it’s important to stress, that sometimes, the SEO consultant just needs to make a decision as to where improvements can be made by spending some time on the website.

For example, you have to put yourself in the customers shoes.

If the content marketing is boring, then it will have a high bounce rate.

If you pretend that you’re a customer, visiting your e-commerce shop, and you have a set of questions in your head regarding that item.

You then should decide does that page answer the customers commonly asked questions.

Therefore, sometimes the bounce rate is high on e-commerce websites, because the text is “content thin”.

This simply means that there could be hundreds of different products, however if the time and effort haven’t been put into writing the product descriptions this could be increasing the bounce rate. for example, if a customer cannot get the exact measurements of say a piece of furniture, they will leave the product page.

 

Why should we even care if our business has a high bounce rate?

A high bounce rate can mean that too many shoppers are leaving the website without visiting another page.

It can therefore mean a potential lost opportunity.

The reason being is, if the website was better designed, faster, or just perhaps answered a question that the customer had, they might not have left the website.

Therefore, top e-commerce businesses are always looking for ways to lower the bounce rate.

What we have done everything we can but the bounce rate remains really high?

Sometimes, some businesses will have a high bounce rate based just on the products that they are selling. For example, we would say that products that are high-value, sometimes these will have a high bounce rate.

That’s just because, for example, whether it’s a television or perhaps a diamond engagement ring, often shoppers will shop around to find the best deal. This means that often the bounce rate will be higher.

 

Does website hosting have a bearing on the bounce rate?

Yes, it most definitely does.

A common mistake that many businesses make is that they purchase inexpensive hosting.

However, this sometimes means that the hosting is very slow.

If the websites hosting is slow, this will negatively impact the businesses SEO.

 

How often should we monitor bounce rates?

This depends on how big your marketing team is. For example, a large e-commerce retailer will often monitor the websites bounce rate daily.

However, for some businesses this won’t be feasible.

However, regardless of the size of the business, you should be regularly checking the bounce rate for key pages such as the home page.

 

How Walsh & Partners can help:

We are one of the most experienced SEO companies around.

If you would like a quote, for local, national or e-commerce SEO, then do give our team a call.