Bounce rate is a metric traditional for web analytics and new in the context of physical retail stores.
Google Analytics defines bounce rate as "a single-page session on a website".
However, in retail stores, there are no pages nor sessions, but there are footfall and shopping time.
Unlike the online world where visiting and leaving a page takes almost no effort at all, shoppers are much more devoted when entering a real physical store.
The sole fact that a shopper has to walk in and out of a store is enough of an environmental change to engage the user more than a website ever could.
Thus, it is normal to see much smaller bounce rates in retail when compared to e-commerce.
The retail experience is more engaging, more attention-grabbing and should be more fun if all steps of the shopper funnel are executed correctly. To learn what all the steps in the funnel are, please refer to the article How to remove friction on every step of the purchase path by our CEO, Martin Birač.
One of these steps is to convert a shopper who entered a store to a shopper who is actively browsing. The perfect metric to measure this is the bounce rate.
Retail Bounce Rate Definition
Retail Bounce Rate is the percentage of shoppers who entered a store and spent less than X seconds inside it.
The X amount of seconds depends on the retail industry and the store function and size, but usually ranges from 10 to 40 seconds.
Retail Bounce Rate causes
There are a few reasons why people could "bounce off" a store:
1. Lack of, or bad navigation
A shopper enters a store and it is not immediately obvious where to find the things he is interested in.
At this point most people will continue to browse, the persistent ones will ask a staffer for help and the uncertain ones will leave the store.
2. Congestions inside the store, lack of staff and high waiting times
How many times have you entered a store only to see people waiting in queues for checkout and fitting rooms?
The danger of losing time will compel people to change their plans and either leave or decide to come back another time. This is, of course, not to be confused with the herding effect in which people get attracted by a big group of people.
3. A disparity between the outside (brand image, shopping window) and inside store experience
If the store displays something on the outside which can not be easily located or experienced on the inside, the shopper feels cheated and disappointed. An obvious example of this is when retailers plaster their whole store window with sales signs, only to dedicate a small space of the store floor to items on sale.
Ideal Retail Bounce Rate
What we found out from working with over 20 leading retailers in different industries, who measured their store bounce rate, is that there is no gold standard bounce rate.
However, only when we measure it, and act upon those measurements we can know what actions positively affect shoppers to stay inside the store once he committed to entering.
With the knowledge of what these actions are, we can scale them across the fleet and improve our brand shopping experience.
To learn more how you can start optimizing your fleet today contact us at office@monolith.co and start to use our free demo.