Consumer Behavior

Consumer ‘bouncing’ proving costly to retailers

Adobe Stock

August 10, 2023

The average cost of a customer bouncing off a brand website is $5.11 and most bouncing is due to a customer's poor landing experience on a brand site.

Those are findings from SimplicityDX survey that polled 1,000 U.S. online shoppers that started their shopping journey on a social media platform within the last three months

"The math of customer acquisition is broken," Ruth Peters, co-founder and CMO at SimplicityDX, said in a press release on the findings. "Brands are literally leaving money on the table as their customers click through from social to product detail pages. Our research found that 73% of shoppers do not end up buying after a bounce, so there is a big opportunity to change the economics of customer acquisition by focusing on the post-click experience."

"SimplicityDX Academy research has consistently shown over time that 65% of consumers describe social as a great place to discover new products, but only 15% of consumers check out on social media, preferring to buy on the brand's website," she said.

The cost of a bounce ranges given when it happens in the shopping journey and by the type of customer.

$4.89 is the lost opportunity cost when a new customer bounces.
$5.24 is the lost opportunity cost when an existing customer bounces.
$5.11 is the lost opportunity cost due to a bounce averaged across all customers.

Additional findings include:

66% of respondents now use social media every week for shopping.
76% of shoppers bounce 50% of the time or more from social media.
Only 3% of shoppers surveyed say they never bounce.
73% of the respondents were lost and did not buy from the brand at a later date.
62% of shoppers felt frustrated and/or annoyed with the brand when they bounced from the brand site.
24% of the respondents are less likely to shop with the brand again, showing the impact of poor experience goes beyond the bounce to revenue performance.
13% went on to buy from a competitor, a double blow to the brand.

The top three reasons shoppers bounced were (multiple answers allowed):