Drop off rate measures how many potential customers do not complete their purchase or inquiry. In a world of forms (like a contact page) and e-commerce, this is pivotal to understanding how to optimize your site and not lose customers. If your drop off rate isn't going down, you've got a leak in your funnel that you need to fix.
If you want to fix it today, try Upflowy.
You as a customer are unlikely to suffer through an entire friction-filled web experience because it feels like wading through mud, you wish you never arrived on their home page. If you can understand your web experience data, then you're in a much better position to avoid customer drop off. For most customers, the most common paths are those with the least resistance.
The drop off rate is calculated by:
dividing the number of people who abandon their purchase or inquiry by the total number of people who initiated it.
For example, if 2000 people visit your website but only 200 people make a purchase, the drop off rate would be 90%. Many businesses use page tracking tools like Google Analytics to better measure this particular metric.
An insight into this rate can lead to website optimization and experimentation. The experimentation is at the core of what we do at Upflowy and serves to find the best experience for customers to increase conversion rates.
Drop off rate is also often referred to as the abandonment rate. This is because it measures how many potential customers abandon their purchase or inquiry.
This is different from the funnel drop, which is a more granular or specific measurement of drop. The funnel drop is a more in-depth metric that measures how many people drop out of the purchase funnel at each stage. An understanding of funnel drop can really help discover insights into your customer's journey, avoiding potential pain and friction points.
This can be helpful in identifying where people are dropping out and why. Identifying that particular page or noticing which of your landing pages isn’t performing well should inform experimentation and budget allocations for paid advertising. You don’t want to be spending equally on all paid pages, you want to allocate more money to high performing pages to increase conversions.
A good drop off rate will depend on the industry, product, and other factors. Simply though, your drop off rate should be as low as possible.
We looked at some conversion benchmarks from Ruler Analytics for different industries and then reverse-engineered the industry standard for drop off rate.
|
Industry |
Conversion Rate |
Drop Off Rate |
|
B2B Ecommerce |
3.2% |
96.8% |
|
B2B Services |
3.5% |
96.5% |
|
B2B Tech |
1.7% |
98.3% |
|
B2C Ecommerce |
2.0% |
98% |
You shouldn't rest on your laurels though, as any high drop off rate indicates problems occurring that should be addressed. Your growth team should investigate the process, and the user journey and definitely begin to empathy map. The journey toward activation or conversion should be as easy as pie.
How to prioritise your drop rate information?
The drop off rate at each point of the funnel should be measured individually so you can identify the points where you need to focus and what elements will have the most leverage. If you’re aware of keen points where the drop changes, then you’re better able to improve and optimize these sections, improving the path to conversion.
For example, if a homepage has 1000 hits, then only 400 of those users click the “learn more” CTA, then that page has experienced a 60% drop off.
Of those 400 people, only 120 people continue through the site, which is a drop rate of 70%.
Drop off rate on the second one is higher so should you focus on that first? Seeing how 600 people on the first step are lost vs losing 280 on the second, the first screen has more importance with overall users, so that needs to be addressed first
How to reduce your drop off rate
There are a number of reasons why people might drop off, such as website design issues, high shipping costs, or a complicated checkout process. Reducing the drop off rate is essential for businesses because it can mean more sales and more customers. There are a number of ways to reduce the drop off rate:
At Upflowy, we empower businesses to create an engaging signup flow or other data collection web experience. Through our form and content components, your business can storytell during this process, reinforce with sales copy or limit the friction involved. Through our integrations, the booking process can take place in the flow, with our HTML insert with Calendly.
The analysis and reduction of a business drop off rate can be instrumental in increasing conversions. Having more customers staying on your website, progressing through your data collection steps and more lead to higher chances of conversion. Be sure to take this into consideration when you’re looking at your marketing data, keep the customer interested and the momentum going.