By Jon Clark, managing partner at Moving Traffic Media, a New York digital agency offering SEO, PPC, and Amazon marketing services.
Do your analytics tell you that people aren’t staying on your website for very long? Worryingly, the average time spent on a website is roughly 54 seconds—not long at all! Your goal should be to ensure people stay on your website for much longer than a minute.
There are many reasons why someone may only stay on your website for a few seconds. For example, your site may be too slow to load or it could be irrelevant to the searcher’s query. With that being said, I want to share my secrets for getting people to stay on your website and, ultimately, engage with your business.
1. Build trust and deliver value.
I’m sure you will agree that the foundation of any good relationship is trust. So when someone lands on your website, the relationship clock begins ticking, and you don’t have very long to create a feeling of trust. You need to show visitors that you value them and you have something to offer them.
But how are you able to generate these feelings in such a small space of time? There are plenty of different approaches, for example:
- Add social proof like badges, client logos and testimonials
- Keep your content up to date
- Make sure you have a professional and stylish logo
- Check for poor grammar in your copy
- Add terms and conditions and privacy policy pages
- Add an “About” page
- Utilize original, high-quality images
- Make sure everything on your website functions effectively
- Choose a good-quality theme
2. Use calls to action to direct people effectively.
One of the main reasons why a lot of people end up leaving the websites they visit is because they don’t know what to do next. You should never expect your website visitors to be able to read your mind.
You need to turn visitors into active users by guiding them with calls to action (CTAs). Examples include “download the guide” or “read more.” After all, how do you expect people to take the actions you want them to if you don’t explain what these actions are?
3. Ensure your website’s navigation is seamless.
When you land on a website, you should know what to do without needing to think about it. Your instinct should guide you. It really needs to be that simple.
There are a few rules that I like to follow to make sure this is the case:
- Structure your website’s navigation in a useful, intuitive and logical manner—now is not the time to reinvent the wheel or try to do something different.
- Don’t make users click more than two times to get somewhere important on your website.
- Think of what information your visitors are looking for and will find important, and ensure this is within easy reach.
4. Make your website quick to load.
We live in a day and age whereby most people are very time-poor. When we browse the internet, convenience is the name of the game! We want to find exactly what we need at a rapid pace. We don’t want to wait.
So if you make people wait for your website to load, you can bet your bottom dollar that a lot of people will simply give up and go elsewhere instead. How do you make your website load quicker, though? I recommend you:
- Minify HTML, JavaScript and CSS
- Enable browser caching
- Reduce your redirects
- Compress and optimize your images
- Choose a hosting solution that optimizes performance
5. Link to other content on your website.
One of the best ways to get people to stay on your website for longer is by linking to other pieces of content, meaning people will click on your website links and view other pages. Of course, you need to make sure you link in the right way. Linking several times in one paragraph is not the way to go. It is overwhelming, and viewers will likely end up ignoring the links altogether.
I would also recommend that you avoid linking in the first paragraph altogether. This is when your readers are taking action or you’re encouraging them to keep reading, so there’s no point in distracting them here. You need to pick your moments with care.
6. Write content that is unique and answers your visitors’ questions.
One reason why a lot of people leave websites is that it doesn’t answer their search queries. When people search for something on Google, they expect to click on a website that fulfills their search needs. When this doesn’t happen, they leave the website and leave it quickly.
If this is happening to you, it indicates that your SEO strategy could be off. Are you appearing in search result pages that don’t adequately relate to what your website offers? Maybe you have a clothing boutique in New York, but you’re appearing in search results for clothing boutiques in other parts of the United States?
You also need to make sure you’re answering people’s questions. People are increasingly asking questions when searching on Google, especially as voice search has become more possible, so answering these can help you appear in more relevant searches. You may also be able to appear in the featured snippets on Google, which can help you get more exposure and attract more traffic to your website.
So the next time you write a blog post, don’t ask yourself, What can I write? Instead, think about what your audience is looking for!
