How To Get Eyeballs on Your Website and Keep Them There Longer
Nearly every one of us carries a small computer everywhere we go that provides us with a constant feed of news, games, social media, movies, and TV shows so we’re never bored for even a second. The next time you find yourself standing in line anywhere―the bank, a store, a fast-food restaurant―take a look around and see who isn’t using their phone.
This “need for feed” is real and although there’s some dispute as to whether or not attention spans are decreasing because of it, there’s a consensus that the average person’s attention span is somewhere between 8-12 seconds. If you have a website, you have between 8-12 seconds to compel your visitor to click on something. Between 8-12 seconds to engage. Between 8-12 seconds before they bounce over to one of the thousands of sites like yours.
Bounce Rate
A high bounce rate might be good for trampolines but for a website, it’s disastrous. A bounce rate is calculated by dividing single-page sessions by all sessions on a site. It’s the rate at which users leave a site without clicking on anything further. You don’t want visitors to bounce from your site; you want them to stick around and buy what you’re selling or buy something your advertisers are selling. To do this, you must engage them.
How To Grab Attention
First and foremost, you need to use effective advertising and SEO practices to get people to click on your site in the first place. Once they’ve clicked on your site, your work at engaging them and keeping them from bouncing begins.
Don’t keep them waiting. That 8-12 seconds you have to grab a visitor’s attention on your site drops to 3 seconds when it comes to waiting for your site to load. Studies have shown that if a user has to wait more than 3 seconds for a mobile page to load, they’ll move on. All of those cool graphics or nifty images mean nothing if 53% of your target audience doesn’t see them.
Keep it simple. Your website should have an attractive layout that is clear and concise. Too many options and unnecessary information on your landing page will frustrate impatient visitors. Bold keywords and bulleted lists will draw attention.
Use video content. Video may be scary for some website owners but a professional-looking video can engage people by showing them your brand’s history, how to use your product, and customer testimonials.
Use internal links. You can use links within your content to bring users to other information on different pages within your site. This can be done with links on your homepage or monthly blog posts and will increase page views and keep users on your site longer.
Utilize a search bar. This makes life easier for the user. While you may want users to read every word of your carefully-written text, the user doesn’t want to sift through it to get to what they’re looking for. A search bar finds what they need while still keeping them on your website.
Creating an effective website is a balancing act. It should be informative without too many words. It should grab the user’s attention without being too over the top. It should have attractive high-quality images without their high resolution slowing down the loading of the page.
At Intergetik, our Web Design Department not only designs websites that load quickly and have the perfect balance of attractiveness and functionality but also provides ongoing updates and analytics to ensure your website is bringing in the most traffic possible. Call Intergetik today at (314)749-0492 and let us show you how your website can work for you.