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When site visitors fail to stay on your site long enough to realize how much value you site adds to them it’s a lose:lose for both the website owner and the visitor.
The website owner just cannot connect with the site visitor, build trust, which helps get the site visitor to purchase products and services available on the website.Here are some tried and tested – free ways – to get a site visitor to stay longer on your website, which can become a win:win for both. |
Site Search:
Once your website has exceeded about 15 pages or so, it’s a great idea to add a – Search Facility – to your website. Place the site – Search – text box prominently on the website. Some where in the top right hand corner of the website’s head section is the usual position.
Label the search text box clearly and simply use – Search it´s a great label for the website´s search text box.
Definitely test the website Search system. Establish whether the site search process works accurately or does not. If it does not, then get it fixed. Having a site search system that works erractically is a lot worse than having no site search system at all.
Make Sure Webpage Content Can Be Skim Read
Very few site visitors ( if any ) read web page content word for word. Most site visitors skim read page content to get a sense of whether they wish to read the details or not. To make it easy for site visitors to skin read a web page:
- Use well thought through paragraph headings
- Break large paragraphs into bullets where possible
- Keep paragraph text in skin readable chunks, ( long paragraphs are a no no )
All of the above is critical if the site visitor is skin reading to make a decision to buy or not to buy.
Keep Website Style And Colors Consistent
As site visitors navigate across pages on your website, ensure that the look and feel of each page is consistent across the website. Never let the site visitor wonder whether they are on the same site or whether they have navigated to another site altogether.
Your template layout, page header content, page footer content, adverts and so on should have a site wide consistency.
For example do not have a two column template for your Home page, a three column template for inner pages a single column for your Blog and so on, no matter how attractive each template may look.
Keep the color of links consistent across all pages. Most site visitors seem to prefer Blue for links. Hence if you are sorely tempted to experiment with link colors across your website pages, do not.
Use Bold and Italics Sparingly
If your page content is littered with a large number of words in bold or italics you will emphasize nothing as well as make the page content look horrible.
A web page loaded with unrelated graphics makes the page take long to load, slows down the website and makes it difficult for the site visitor to work with your website.
Slow, sites with heavy unrelated graphics, never ever delight the site visitor, they just serve to irritate and generate a high bounce rate. Neither of which can be good for business.
Site visitors will exit your website very quickly when if this happens.
PopUp Adverts Are Terrible
Adverts are necessary for any website. They earn the website revenue. Make sure you integrate adverts into your website page content carefully and well.
Make sure that your adverts and PopUp windows at not constantly badgering your site visitor. This is really an excellent technique to get a site visitor to navigate away quickly from your website.
Blur the line between adverts and site content and rest assured that site content will suffer. Often site visitors develop banner blindness and thus miss excellent offers that you may have on the website simply because your adverts are in their face a bit too much.
To Conclude
When you are looking at your website to identify its design / operational flaws, do look at the website through – Site Visitors – eyes not your own.
Do your very best to make sure that site visitors will enjoy the time they spend on your website. Then they are sure to spend their money there as well. Now would not be that good for your bank account?
Finally, please share what you’ve done on your website, the changes you´ve made to ensure that your site visitor was happy and stayed longer. We all can benefit hugely from such sharing.
