The Best Tricks for Decreasing your Etsy Shop Bounce Rate

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Do you constantly refresh your Etsy sellers app to see how much traffic and visitors you have? Do the number of visitors to your shop match the number of views you have on a daily basis? 

This may mean that you have a high bounce rate.

What is a bounce rate?

Google Analytics defines a bounce rate as:

A single-page session on your site. In Analytics, a bounce is calculated specifically as a session that triggers only a single request to the Analytics server, such as when a user opens a single page on your site and then exits without triggering any other requests.

These single-page sessions have a session duration of 0 seconds since there are no subsequent hits after the first one that would let Analytics calculate the length of the session. 

Over a given time period:

Bounce rate of a website=total number of bounces across all pages/total number of entrances across all the pages on the website

This number is represented as a percentage. According to my research, polling other Etsy sellers and reading online Etsy seller forums, a good bounce rate is around 70%.

To get analytics on your bounce rate, integrate your Etsy account through Google Analytics.

Why do I have a high bounce rate?

Put simply, you have a high bounce rate because your item did not meet the visitors’ expectations. Reasons for this include:

• Your item description and title are not relevant to your item
• Your item tags are not relevant to your item
• Your visitors expectations about your webpage did not meet what they found

Your Item Description and Title are not Relevant to Your Item

I am in Etsy sellers groups on Facebook. These groups are a great way to get tips from other sellers and to see how other people approach selling on Etsy.

At times sellers will have others critique their item listings. One day, a woman who sells bohemian chic accessories and knick knacks, asked why she was getting a lot of visits, but no sales for the item she posted for critique.

Upon review of the item you could see a great item, but the title and item description said “rustic farmhouse”. 

Clearly, customers looking for “rustic farmhouse” items would have no interest in a bohemian crystal.  These visitors were clicking onto her item and then immediately bouncing out due to the item not being relevant to their search.

Make sure you review your item titles and descriptions! Do a search in your niche to see how other sellers are titling and describing their items. Review the sellers who have sold the most. Use this as a jumping off point for your items.

Your Item Tags are not Relevant to Your Item

I ran an experiment. I made two listings for an item I sell in my Etsy shop: a new baby savings calculator. I then compared the bounce rate for the tags I used for this item by making them different for each listing.

For the first listing, I made the tags relevant to people shopping for a baby shower. For example, the tags I used were: baby shower, new baby, mother to be, baby shower gift, etc.

For the second listing, the tags I used were more in line with my niche, budgeting and personal finance: savings thermometer, baby savings goal, new baby savings, savings tracker, etc.

The item that had a bounce rate of 100%? The first listing. People who were searching for baby shower items had no interest in a savings tracker.

They were looking to spend money on a gift for the new baby! 

Use this technique to compare two identical items in your shop to see what tags work best for you.

Being in the digital printable niche allows me to have endless copies of the same item making this an easy experiment to conduct.

By comparing the tags for two items, you will be able to better optimize your listings for higher sales conversions!

Your Visitors Expectations did not Meet What They Found

Pinterest is amazing. It is my favorite resource for meal planning ideas and other frugal ideas! I use it every single day. Notice how I said I use it? For IDEAS.

Pinterest for me has been the worst converting social platform for sales in my Etsy shop.

Pinterest is touted by all the marketing gurus for free marketing to drive traffic to your website. Don’t get me wrong, Pinterest is great for my blog.

I get a ton of referral traffic through Pinterest for my blog. That is expected though, as a blog is a place people go to be inspired. Inspiration is the cornerstone of Pinterest’s marketing strengths.

Pinterest does bring my Etsy shop a lot of traffic. As you can see, however, the bounce rate for this traffic is high, and it does not convert at a high rate for me.

This high bounce rate means that the expectation of Pinterest users do not match the pins I have made for my Etsy shop.

I have made pins per the guidance provided to me by gurus and I have pinned my Etsy listing pics.

The pin that has converted for me? Pin #2. To pin my Etsy listing pics, I pin directly from my item listing using the Pinterest browser plugin.

These pins have converted for me, because Etsy has picked them up and repinned them, bringing ten times as much traffic to my shop through Pinterest.

I highly recommend pinning your product listing pictures straight from Etsy to enhance your conversion rate and decrease your bounce rate.

Using Tailwinds to Increase Reach

You can also increase traffic to your shop by using Tailwinds to share your pins through the “tribes” feature. Tailwinds is great because it helps you two build a bigger network with other pinners.

By using Tailwinds, other people will pin your pins, which in turn will increase your reach!

Let’s decrease that bounce rate!

Now that you know why your bounce rate is high, you can work on improving your listings, tags, and try a new Pinterest strategy.

Let me know if these tips help you in the comments below. If you have other great tips on how to decrease your bounce rate, share them!