8 Tips to Keep Visitors on Your Website for Longer

 

Keeping visitors on your website for longer is typically a good thing for increasing conversions like a purchase, form submission, email signup, etc. Recently, we wrote a blog post on which metrics you should monitor if you want to increase visitors' time on your website. After you’ve gathered data through analytics and identified page opportunities for improvement, next you’ll need to make any necessary website updates to keep visitors from bouncing.

In order to enhance the time spent on your website, there are a few things you can do. Here are eight tactics you can employ so visitors are more likely to stay on your website for longer.

Quality content is vital to any successful website. First, high-quality content makes for engaged users. Nobody wants to trudge through a website that’s a bore. An unengaged user is almost certainly going to become a “bounce,” which is a user who visits a web page, then leaves. An engaged user has a much higher chance of being transformed into a customer.

 

Second, search engines such as Google are discernable critics of website content quality. Being highly ranked in Google’s search results is of vital importance. It’s estimated that there are several billion search engine queries on Google every single day. Google will reward with higher search rankings websites that are deemed to feature high-quality content and will penalize websites that are deemed to feature lesser quality content.

People like visually pleasing photos, graphics, videos, etc., and will spend time looking at them. Whether it’s subliminal or conscious thinking, the human psyche enjoys imagery that it finds beautiful. To keep visitors on your website for longer, it helps having an attractive design. What constitutes an “attractive” website is the tricky bit that you’ll need to figure out. Know that design, color, placement, and content all need to meld together to form a beautiful website.

It’s crucial that your web pages have a ‘call to action’ that directs visitors on the next step they should take. Your call to action is essentially the crescendo of your sales pitch. It all culminates into a brief, critical moment when your prospect either does or doesn’t transform into a conversion. Give serious thought to your approach, whatever that approach may be. There is no “one-size fits all” right or wrong answer as every business and situation is different. However, in all situations, your call to action needs to be purposeful and well thought out in its delivery.

In this day and age, it’s critical for a website to be user-friendly for both desktop and mobile. Depending upon your business and the demographics of your clientele, a website that is designed for mobile devices might take priority over other technical considerations. If a website strikes a user as being clunky or unintuitive, they are going to “bounce.” If properly executed, the best responsive website will fully accommodate desktop and mobile users equally, preventing bounces from both.

People have short attention spans. For better or worse in that regard, your website needs to accommodate this quirky aspect of human psychology. Don’t give your potential customer any excuse to become a “bounce.” If it’s fast loading pages they want, give them fast loading pages.

The overall user experience needs to be deeply considered. Think to yourself, “What’s the full package I’m offering?” Your website’s content, imagery, colors, design, format, and call to action are all coming together to ultimately offer a positive experience to the user, with the goal of transforming that user into a conversion. It’s your job to show them a wonderful experience before and after becoming a conversion. The user experience starts on your website but finishes with your delivery. From start to finish, make sure your users are happy users.

Depending upon your business and goal, you should consider featuring some sort of video or graphic storytelling. People are consuming more and more watchable content every day on popular platforms such as Instagram and TikTok. The written word is important content, but if relevant to your goal, you should strategically supplement written content with engaging video and graphic content. Remember, you’re trying to transform users into conversions. Keeping users engaged and on your website is the path to this objective; use all of the tools at your disposal to see it done.

Test, test, and test some more. One of the great things about a website is that the content can be added, edited, and deleted with great ease. “Trial and error” will give you valuable information on what’s successful and what’s not. Switch out content and images, try different strategies, utilize different methods; as long as you’re able to track and analyze your A/B testing, you’ll be able to hone in on what works best.

When all is said and done, keeping visitors on your website for longer is key to transforming them into customers. How to do this is by keeping them genuinely engaged. The content, imagery, colors, design, format, and call to action all mix together into an experience that will either attract or drive away visitors. In all ways possible, your website should offer the best experience because a happy visitor is more likely to become a happy customer.

 

Find out how you can improve your website to generate more conversions by partnering with an experienced digital marketing agency. Sales & Marketing Technologies offers website design, development, and digital marketing services to help businesses grow by engaging more visitors.

 

Call 407.682.2222 or contact us to schedule a free 30-minute consultation!