How to Improve Your Landing Page Bounce Rate (With Real Fixes)

Landing pages are created to make visitors stay long enough to perform a desired action, so the last thing you would want is a high bounce rate - a telltale sign of an inefficient landing page. To get to the bottom of this, we should trace back to the basics: what is a landing page bounce rate? Is it different from an exit rate? When does it happen? This blog post will answer all these burning questions to assist you in building the most optimal landing pages for your eCommerce store.

What is Landing Page Bounce Rate?

Landing page bounce rate is a common issue that every online merchant faces in the process of completing their eCommerce store.

Landing page bounce rate refers to the percentage of users who visit the page and leave without taking any action. This metric is a common measurement in digital marketing that directly correlates to the level of engagement your landing page has with visitors.

A high bounce rate is a barometer for problems such as slow loading time, irrelevant content, and poor audience targeting. It is an indispensable facet across all industries, with a key role in eCommerce since every visit has the prospect of converting.

Is Bounce Rate the Same as Exit Rate?

While possessing certain similarities, bounce rate and exit rate are different concepts. Bounce rate measures the percentage of visitors in a single-page session, whereas exit rate tracks the percentage of visitors who leave your website from a specific page without taking into account the number of pages they have viewed before. For example, if a user flipped through two pages before dropping off on the last one, that is counted toward the exit rate, not the bounce rate.

How Is Landing Page Bounce Rate Measured?

To find out what the average bounce rate for a landing page is, it’s crucial to get a full understanding of how it is measured. Here is the universal formula:

• Single-page sessions: The group of visitors who land on the page and leave without making any further interaction.
• Total sessions: The total number of visits to the landing page.

For instance, out of 150 people who visit your landing page, 70 leave without interacting. This means the bounce rate is ~46%. That said, these numbers are not harvested in the wild. They are calculated with a reliable analytics tracking tool, namely Google Analytics or Usermaven.

Now, let’s say you have applied this formula to your own landing page, and a rather unfavorable result comes: a high bounce rate on the landing page. What to do? The next chapter will give the lowdown on the reasons this issue occurs, as well as pertinent solutions to each one.

What Causes Landing Page Bounce Rate?

Customers bounce for many reasons. Your landing page might contain one or more of these issues without your knowledge. Let’s go through them one by one.

Slow Loading Time

A slow loading time keeps visitors from exploring and advancing to the next step in the conversion funnel - an unfortunate mistake that causes a lot of trouble in maintaining a business.

Nobody likes to wait, especially while online shopping. If your landing page has a delay of over 2 seconds, that’s a determinant for a guaranteed drop-off. This hurdle not only affects user experience and bounce rate but also your SEO performance as well.

Our solution: Make use of tools like Google PageSpeed Insights to get a full report of your landing page’s status. Compress media and optimize content to speed up the loading time.

More from GemPages: Fast Track to Success: Optimize Your Shopify Store Speed for Peak Performance.

Misleading Content

What’s more important than having a head-turning headline on the search result page is producing equally high-quality content on the actual landing page. The initial excitement and curiosity of users will wear off instantly if the page does not match what is advertised in the ad, email, or search result.

Our solution: Emphasize business integrity by prioritizing message match and straying away from clickbait-y titles.

Poor UI and UX

A badly designed interface leads to an unpleasant user experience - the main culprit behind a high bounce rate.

What may cause a landing page with a high bounce rate? An assessment of your website UI and UX will give you a clear-as-day answer. Elements such as a cluttered layout, user-unfriendly navigation, buried CTAs, and intrusive pop-ups all contribute to a poor user experience. As a result, a high bounce rate is manifested.

Our solution: Start with an intuitive website template, a clean layout with minimal distractions, and handy details that streamline the user experience. The more they can navigate, the better the chance to convert.

Get all the insights from GemPages:

eCommerce UI: Top Tips to Boost Your Conversion Rates

Ecommerce UX: Best Practices For 2025

No Visible CTAs

Your goal is to lead users to the end of the conversion funnel, but there are few to no CTAs that tell them where to go next. That’s the sign of a landing page that lacks purpose and direction. In a competitive scene like eCommerce, you can’t risk overlooking this bounce rate-inducing issue.

Our solution: Scatter CTA buttons throughout the landing page, especially above the fold, to remind visitors to take the action that needs completion. Utilize straightforward, action-oriented language and pay attention to the color and font as well as the overall look of these buttons against your page layout.

Want to master Call-to-Actions? Read our blog: Effective Tips to Create Call to Action Buttons that Convert.

Wrong Traffic Sources

Having constant traffic is excellent, but it does not always result in a positive outcome. Putting ads up on platforms that will drive the wrong traffic will naturally lead to a higher bounce rate. A costly ad campaign on various social media platforms that targets broad keywords may attract visitors who won’t be interested in advancing further.

Our solution: Focus on high-intent users only by segmenting your audience based on demographics, interests, and shopping behaviors. This omits wasted ad spend that could make a dent in your budget.

Mobile Incompatibility

If your landing page performs poorly on mobile, it will be detrimental to the user experience and result in a boosted bounce rate.

Mobile optimization is no longer a selective method for specific websites. User expect to browse on their mobile devices as comfortably as on their laptops, especially with online shopping. Unreadable texts, hard-to-click buttons, unsuitable layout, slow loading time, and the like are the most prevailing issues that make users want to leave.

Our solution: Use a responsive, mobile-centric design that adjusts to different screen sizes. Test different variations before launching the landing pages.

Lack of Content Legibility

You have hired a highly regarded web designer on the market to assemble a flashy landing page, but the bounce rate is still off the roof. Then the problem may lie in the legibility of your content. A careless choice of font, text blocks, sizes, and contrast between different sections could cost you a visit. If a user can’t scan and skim to get the key message, they’ll not hesitate to click on the ‘x’ button.

Our solution: Utilize digestible paragraphs, bullet points, and readable font sizes on both desktop and mobile.

4 CRO Tactics to Monitor and Improve Your Bounce Rate

Use Reliable Tracking Tools

Google Analytics 4 is the latest model of Analytics, which was designed to provide accurate tracking and predictions for a website’s performance.

For website owners, a reliable tracking tool is the MVP to evaluate your site’s performance with real data. Among countless options, Google Analytics (GA4) stands among the best ones for website owners across different industries to track fast and factually.

The tool defines bounce rate as the percentage of unengaged sessions with a duration under 10 seconds, alongside event-based tracking, time on page, and other engagement measurements. With a comprehensive system, the ability to define bounce rate to come up with apt solutions is heightened.

Utilize Heatmaps and Session Recordings

Heatmaps are a great measure to monitor your visitors’ behavior on a landing page.

Heatmaps show where users click, move, and scroll. Session recordings give you a close look at the user’s activities - every hesitation, immediate exits, and rage clicks. These two make a dynamic duo that helps you pinpoint which areas are well-designed and which ones need improvement. Opt for apps such as Hotjar, Crazy Egg, or Lucky Orange to use these techniques to their full potential.

Segment Your Traffic

The definition of bounce rate is basic, but how you choose to analyze it largely impacts the outcome of your landing page’s performance. Our advised technique: segment your traffic. What does this exactly entail? Instead of grouping all visits into one big pool, take into account their sources, devices, and user intent.

For instance, a new user vs. an old user could perform differently. While a potential prospect is more prone to bounce due to your website’s unfamiliar interface, a returning one often engages and moves further down the conversion path.

Conduct A/B Tests

Make apt changes to your landing page based on accurate testing and forecasting from GemX.

If you are a frequent reader of GemPages’ blog, it doesn’t come as a surprise that A/B testing is one of our favorite methods to narrow the gap between the current and the ideal version of your website. While it’s possible to audit the whole store, it is recommended to test different pages and elements to make small but powerful tweaks. 

These tests are a perfect match for finding a resolution for the landing page bounce rate simply by putting two variations side-by-side to see which one comes out victorious. The best news? They can be conducted with a simple tool such as GemX - a fast and accurate A/B testing app made for Shopify brands.

To learn more about GemX, check out the official site: GemX - Fast & Affordable A/B Testing Platform for Shopify.

The Bottom Line

The term bounce rate may seem self-explanatory, but there are still subtle facets to be explored to get the full picture. While we have studied the ins and outs of the concept, the ball is in your court to determine which steps to take to achieve a high-converting landing page. The success of your website will be further solidified once you decide to be mindful of the smallest detail, starting from the bounce rate.

FAQ about Landing Page Bounce Rate