Posted by There is an explosion of content on the Internet today.
So much so that people don’t ‘Read’ content anymore, rather they skim through it. In a time where there is an abundance of information, keeping your visitors on your website even for more than a few seconds is getting harder.
It can be a struggle to convince visitors that your site offers a lot of value.
It’s even more frustrating when you have a website with a great design and good content, only to find that visitors are still in a hurry to leave your website.
Why Do Visitors Leave Your Website?
There’s a simple analogy to this. Inviting visitors to your website is like throwing a party. It’s not enough that you buy chips and a dozen bottles of sodas and hope for a great party. You really need to take the effort and make the party worth going to.
The average time spent on a website is 58 seconds! But this need not be the case with your website. By making use of some best practices you can increase this to a large extent. But first, you need to understand why visitors bounce from your website in the first place.
Here are 9 main reasons why visitors are in hurry to leave your website:
#1- Poor Website Design
The first and foremost reason why people leave a website is just because of its boring nature and design, in short bad website user experience. There are times, when people just focus on the visual graphics and content apart from the actual website design part. So there should be user friendly interface and easy navigation.
Apart from that, broken links and meaningless applications on the website may put off your visitors. So to make customers stay on your website, and enhance customer experience, try to develop and maintain an attractive and easy to use website.
#2- Bad Content Structure
Your users like it when they can find the information they need with ease and can understand it properly. Unfortunately, we sometimes find ourselves looking at our content in our own perspective rather than our users.
So while we understand it, our users can’t make heads or tails of it and may even struggle to find information that’s located on other pages. Make sure you group content that’s similar on topics and highlight important information you find your users would be looking for.
#3- Too Many Popups
It’s normal for website owners to attract advertisers to their sites and get more money from the content they’ve posted. This allows them to effectively promote the website and get additional costs for website maintenance.
But having too many ads popping up on your website won’t allow your website visitors to properly read the content. This means they won’t help you when it comes to attracting more people and therefore effectively monetizing your website.
You should find a way to make more money from your website and still make sure the site continues to be interesting for each visitor who happens to stumble upon your web page. To increase website visitors and earn money from the traffic, you need to discuss all the terms of placing the ads on your website with the advertisers.
Think about their proposals carefully!
#4- Irrelevant Information
Most visitors will get to your website by a typing a particular keyword on Google or other search engines. If a visitor lands on your website only to find it is unrelated to what he is looking for, he will just close the tab and move on.
It is therefore important to target the right keywords in your content. Your website should also be optimized to rank for the right target keywords.
Tip: Keep an eye on your websites bounce rate in Google Analytics.
#5- Slow Load Time
Website visitors tend to care more about page load than everything else we are throwing at them. User patience levels have been sharply decreasing over the years. Even in the long gone year 2007 Amazon tests revealed that every 100ms increase in load time of Amazon.com decreased sales by 1%.
People expect sites to loads within two seconds. As simple as that. A study showed that as much as 45% of people will abandon a page if the loading time is more than 3 seconds. Not just that but more than 50% of online shoppers claim that page loading times are important for their loyalty to a site.
So in simple words people are not just going to leave your website, but they may never come back again even if they were your loyal customers. Use these 9 plugins to speed up your WordPress website.
#6- Auto-Play Videos on Your Site
I don’t know about you, but nothing makes me click a website’s “Back” button faster than a video that auto-plays. Today’s digital-savvy customers prefer to choose how and when they consume online content. Blasting at them without their consent is a quick way to drive potential customers from your website — without a purchase.
#7- You Don’t Have Call To Actions
Don’t you have a CTA? Thumbs down dude!
You have a great web site design and some pretty awesome content to offer. Let’s say you have done all this. Now, what do you do to reduce your bounce rate?
There are many cases of websites like this but the problem is that the user does not know where to go from your landing page. If you want to retain visitors within your website you need to direct him to take action and go to the next page. They might find your content interesting and read it but they are going to leave the landing page as soon as they are done.
Try to link to similar content and provide a CTA to direct the visitor to similar or other relevant pages.
Contrarily there is such a thing as having too many CTAs. I’m sure you have seen some examples of these. Webpages that are stuffed with unnecessary CTAs like ‘Buy this now’ ‘Don’t miss this opportunity, click here now!!’
This is an instant turn off and you’d want to bounce away from this page as fast as possible.
#8- Outdated Content
Updating your website is very important.
You should update your content more often, given that it attracts more visitors, and it also helps search engines find your content faster. No one wants to read outdated information, it being that it’s easy for most of us to actually get brand-new and super updated info.
Don’t lag behind!
If you see that the information on your website is too old, do some research to add some new features to the content you already have.
Your readers will be interested to trace the evolution of your content.
#9- Not Optimized For Mobile Devices
Have you ever come across any website which looks good, even from mobile devices? Most of us use smart phones and tablets in our day to day life for internet browsing.
Research shows that, over 17% of all the web traffic are coming from mobile devices specifically and the total no of smart phone users are rising day by day. As per 2012 Google Study, ‘75% of smartphone users prefer using a mobile-friendly site.’
So this data is pointing towards one single view: If your website is not mobile friendly means is not easily navigable from all the mobile devices, you are losing a huge no of customers for your business just because of bad web user experience.
Conclusion
15 seconds is all you have to get attention of your website visitors. And 15 seconds is a really short amount of time. But if you keep it real, user-friendly, simple, secure, and appealing, you’ll see results and improve your bounce rate.
Misleading your customers and failing to give them what they want is going to be damaging to the reputation of your company. Run a tight ship on your website and make sure you deliver relevant, fast-loading content that exceeds expectations. The right design is key, here.
Remember that people don’t want to use a site that they can’t trust, that they can’t learn from, or that isn’t available. Down time will hurt you, and a lack of mobile compatibility will kill you.
Providing guidance in the midst of a sale is the number-one goal of pretty much every website. Don’t let your audience get lost or distracted. Provide clean navigation, clear calls to action, and a short path to success.
Create trust by doing away with spammy ads and videos. Instead, focus on creating a voice for your brand that resonates with your target audience. The right words at the right time will go a long way.
Finally, find ways to inspire your audience when they arrive. Know your audience and your voice, then speak boldly with the changing seasons.
In everything you do, build trust. You’ll see longer site visits, lower bounce rates, and more happy customers.