Businesses often wonder what they can do in order to keep visitors for a longer time on their websites. This is very important in order to drive revenue and sales. Reducing bounce rates and enhancing website engagement help in increasing conversion rates.
However, the process of achieving these goals can be complex and requires a holistic approach towards the problem. Keeping visitors on a website for a long time necessitates a multi-pronged approach that involves web development, design, marketing, testing, and behavioral analysis.
In this article, we have listed 7 steps that help in keeping visitors glued to your website for a long time.
Make Navigation Simple
67% of mobile web users will abandon the page they are on if they feel frustrated by the navigation. Even on desktop browsers, if navigation is too complex or cluttered, users will abandon and move to a different website. It is crucial to keep navigation simple and focus on UX/UI. To make sure that the navigation of your website is simple, here are a few things you can do:
Reduce Page Load Time
Even a single second delay in page load time can reduce conversions by 7%. If a page takes more than 3 seconds to load, you can very well assume that most users will not return to your website again. To keep people lurking on your web pages, it is important to make sure they load quickly.
Understand your visitors’ needs
Between 70 and 96 percent of web visitors never return to a website again, and this is mostly because the web page does not serve their needs. To eliminate instances of visitors abandoning your website and to encourage them to stay longer, you should start understanding what your visitors really want.
Engage your visitors
You might be surprised to learn that people form an opinion about your website in just 50 milliseconds (0.05 seconds). To make sure that this opinion is positive, you will need to make your web content and layout attractive, as 38% will stop engaging if they are not pleased with either.
Enhance content readability and usability
Users spend only 5.59 seconds looking at the content on your web page. This means, the content you publish needs to be skimmable and your focus should be on readability more than anything else. In addition, the content you publish should also be useful to the reader. According to Smashing Magazine, these are some of the industry standards you need to follow:
Focus on excellent videos
Research shows that marketers who use video grow revenue 49% quicker than those who do not use videos. In other words, publishing engaging videos that act as infotainment will keep visitors glued to your website for a longer time and help you grow your revenue quickly too.
Test and maintain your website continuously
Bounce rate is defined as the percentage of people who visit a single page on your website and leave immediately. Reducing bounce rate should be an important goal if you wish to keep your visitors glued to your website. Conducting regular A/B tests and initiating ongoing website maintenance are crucial in reducing bounce rates. Bounce rates more than 25% are a cause for concern and need your attention.
Consider a holistic approach towards keeping visitors on your website for a longer time
As you can see, keeping visitors glued to your website is not an easy process. It requires a lot of effort right from web development and design to content and marketing. It requires a holistic approach that first diagnoses what the problem is, and comes up with a customized plan to keep your visitors for a longer time on the website. Making sure that visitors stay on your website for a longer time and ensuring reduced bounce rates require professional assistance.
If you are wondering how you can improve metrics related to visitors staying on your website for a longer time, contact us today.
