Let’s Focus on Your Exit Pages
Don’t assume your website is done being built just because it went live. Maybe you put a lot of time into considering your content. Your goal was to create a site that could basically run itself successfully for years to come. If that’s your mindset, it’s time to turn it around. The truth is that, as with any other part of your company, you can always be improving. You should always be improving. You don’t want to get complacent or allow your site to become stagnant. With that in mind, one of the best places to improve is by addressing your exit pages. Doing so can keep traffic on your site longer, and ultimately inspire that traffic to result in a sale or other type of conversion.
What Are Exit Pages?
Exit pages are simple. When you monitor traffic on your site, your initial goal is to use content and links to draw people in. But you also want to look at when they leave. What page are they on when they decide to close the site or type something else into the search bar? Where are they when you lose that traffic? Those are your exit pages.
You Will Always Have Them
First and foremost, you are always going to have exit pages. People will leave your site. However, identifying these pages gives you a chance to increase dwell times by specifically focusing on upgrading the pages in question. When you see these traffic trends, you know that something on that page is forcing visitors away more than other pages. Unless that page is a confirmation page after making an online sale, it’s in your best interests to see if you can increase engagement and keep traffic on the site.
What Upgrades Do You Need?
This is an open-ended question. The specific upgrades needed differ from one site to the next. They may be obvious, such as clear content errors, image errors, issues with loading times or something else of this nature. With large sites, these things sometimes fly under the radar, but you know them when you see them. Start by correcting those errors.
That said, it’s not always quite so obvious. To help you identify trouble spots, here are a few examples:
- The content on the page is outdated and no longer relevant to the user.
- The page simply does not contain enough valuable information.
- The page does not have enough links to other useful, related pages, so users lose interest and are not guided to the next step.
- The page does not attempt to convert the reader.
- The logical exit comes on that page, as your content wraps up.
- The page has broken links so people attempt to stay on your site, fail to do so, and move on.
- The page is confusing to the reader.
- The page does not offer what the reader expected. When their expectations — realistic or otherwise — are not met, they choose to leave.
Once you figure out exactly where your content goes wrong, then it’s time to overhaul the page to correct the errors. Watch the ranking once you do. Exits from that page will decline, dwell times will increase, conversions will increase and you will know that you focused on the right part of your site. This is one of the most productive ways to upgrade the site because you focus intensely on the areas that need it most.
Working with Us
If you want to know more about exit pages and what you can do to keep your audience on your site, we can help here at Content Customs. We can analyze your site, offer suggestions for upgrades and updates, consider what makes your exit pages the weak links in your online strategy, and then help you create engaging, effective content that will give you the results you’re looking for. Call us today!