Is your brand actively using social media to promote its new deals, discounts or products? 

Have you set up social storefronts to drive purchases? 

Are you getting a lot of traffic from social media platforms? 

Tell us honestly, how much of this traffic is really converting into a successful sale? 

Social media users are forever in a hurry. 

From keeping up with updates from friends to trending content, there’s a lot that happens on social media. 

Brands that do manage to capture this fleeting attention of consumers, often see them click through campaigns, scan through their profiles, visit their website and leave almost always without any form of engagement. 

If you spend a considerable amount of time building up your social media presence through content, collaborations and ad campaigns, you certainly wish for more from the traffic that comes from these platforms. 

But this ‘common’ behavior is more worrisome when you get to the math of the cost of bounce. 

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Download our research on the Cost of Bounce to know more. 

In this blog, we’re going to give you a recap of what social media bounce rate is, why eCommerce businesses experience it the most and the actual loss they incur from losing these visitors. 

What is social media bounce rate? 

Social media bounce rate refers to the number of times a consumer discovers your brand on social media platforms, clicks through to your site, lands on a product detail page, but then leaves without browsing through the options available to them or making any form of positive engagement. 

In simpler terms, this is the traffic that is referred from social media marketing and advertising campaigns, or commerce storefronts, to your brand site, that chooses to leave without making a purchase or even subscribing to updates from your business. 

What is the average social media bounce rate for eCommerce businesses? 

Based on research, The Cost of Bounce, we found that the traffic referred to brand sites from social media platforms sees an alarmingly high bounce rate as compared to other channels. 

Our research found that 76% of online shoppers from social media bounce 50% or more of the time from brand sites. 

According to industry benchmarks, social media has the second highest bounce rate, only slightly behind display advertising. 

Why is social media bounce rate high? 

In our research, we found that 65% of online shoppers from social media prefer to buy the product from the brand site. 

So why do they then bounce? 

We deep dived into the social shopping behavior to get to the root cause of the problem and here’s what we found: 

1. Social media is being used for content consumption and product discovery 

As a part of the research, we looked into how consumers use social media for online shopping. From Facebook Shops, TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram and other platforms, the survey respondents reported using the channels to only discover new brands through content and campaigns created by businesses.  

But as we mentioned above, these shoppers are only looking to explore the options available to them, and choose to purchase from the brand site rather than the social storefronts available to them. Some of the reasons being the ability to learn more about the brand, the other options available and transact over a secure platform. 

2. Shoppers couldn’t find the product that attracted their attention on social media 

On further investigating, we found that the transition from social media to brand site is not often as seamless for the shoppers. From the way a brand presents their products through lifestyle content to the inventory levels of the items being promoted in click to buy ad campaigns or storefronts, here are a few reasons traffic referred to sites from social media bounces: 

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Get more insights on the reasons for social media bounce rate in our research.

What is the impact of a high social media bounce rate? 

Social media platforms are just some of the channels that eCommerce businesses use to reach their target audience. While having a bunch of shoppers bouncing from the website may not seem like a big deal upfront, the impact of a high social media bounce rate can be felt in the longer run - impacting both business revenue and profits. 

Here’s why: 

• 62% of shoppers felt frustrated and/ or annoyed with the brand when they bounced from the brand site.
• 24% of the respondents say that they are less likely to shop with the brand again. 
• 41% of shoppers shared their frustration with friends or on social media. 

This behavior is different for both returning and new customers. You can get more insights from our research here. 

Simply put, a single bounce has a significant ripple effect that negatively impacts your brand perception, reach, customer engagement and hence, conversions. 

To further validate this, we asked 1,000 US online shoppers to recall a recent purchase that they had clicked through to the brand site through social media, but bounced off the page immediately. 

Based on the approximate value of the items they were considering purchasing before the bounce, the total amount of lost sale reaches almost $111,000. 

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But that’s not all. 

Owing to social media algorithms and targeting available to brands, it also becomes much harder for the consumers that bounced to reach the same product again. 

In fact, 44% find it difficult, very hard or almost impossible to find a social media post again. As a result of which 73% of the shoppers that bounced are lost and do not buy from the brand at all - in rare cases, they rediscover the brand, but end up buying an entirely different product from them. 

Can brands reduce the social media bounce rate? 

As the digital landscape grows and consumer behavior on social media evolves, it is dangerous for brands to make assumptions about their online shopping preferences. 

If you have been spending thousands of dollars to grab their attention in the first place, the traditional approach of using social media to drive traffic to your site is no longer working - infact, the bounce is costing you a lot more than what your analytics has to report! 

But there is a way out to address the social media marketing funnel and the consumer’s need to buy from brand websites - it’s called creating contextual and softer landings than the traditional product pages. 

Want to know more about the strategy to reduce your social media bounce rate and increase conversions? 

Download our research to get access to exclusive insights and actionables.  

Check out our infographic Cost of a Bounce to see how important reducing bounce rate is to your brand.