Why Are Visitors Leaving Your Website?
Getting traffic to your site is only half of the battle. You also need to keep people on the site, make conversions and make sales. This is why quality content, rather than keyword spamming, is so important. You need the type of site that not just ranks highly, but that offers information and that keeps people on the page.
Maybe you’ve been noticing that people are leaving your site more often than you’d like, and after far less time than you’d prefer. Many of them just land on the page for a second or two before closing it, indicating to you that it did not give them what they were looking for. Why is this happening? Here are a few reasons to consider:
You Targeted the Wrong Keywords
The keywords people use to find your site do not fit with what your site actually offers. They may be popular keywords. They may see a lot of search traffic. But that doesn’t matter when the visitors get to your site, quickly realize it’s not going to help them, and move on.
Your Site Needs an Update
The internet moves quickly. Site designs that worked 10 years ago are seriously outdated. People know this instinctively. When they see your site, they assume it reflects the quality of your company, your services and/or your products. An outdated site does not inspire confidence and they’ll look somewhere else.
Design Choices Make the Site Hard to Navigate or Hard to Read
Maybe you used a font that is difficult to read. Maybe there’s not enough contrast on the page. Maybe the navigation tools are hard to find or do not make it clear where the reader will end up. People do not want to have to struggle to work through a site, so they’ll just leave. The best sites guide them through intuitively.
You Used Auto-Play Videos
Some users are very turned off by auto-play content. They want more control over the experience. They feel overwhelmed by sound and images when a video simply starts on its own. If you take too much control from the users, they’ll find a different site.
The Sites Takes More Than Two Seconds to Load
Two seconds may not sound like a lot, but that’s how long nearly half of all users will allow before they move on. If the site lags for more than two seconds, they cannot be bothered to wait. They’ll just click back to the search results page. Time is valuable. Make sure your site reflects that.
There’s No Call-to-Action
You don’t want a call-to-action that feels too pushy, but you also do not want to go so far in the other direction that you leave it out entirely. You need to give the reader the chance to contact you or make a purchase. Suggest they do so and make it as easy as you can. Leaving it out means they may like your content but not do anything about it, so you lose conversions.
Getting Started
Certainly, these are not all of the reasons that people leave websites that rank well, but they help show you how important design and content really are. If you’d like to learn more and get better results, do not hesitate to contact us here at Content Customs.
