When it comes to your website, the longer, your visitors stick around - the better. It’s estimated that between 70% and 96% of your website visitors will never return after they click off your website. Website visitors can be converted into paying customers, and the easiest way to increase your chance of conversion is by getting those website visitors to stay on your website. When a visitor sticks around and engages on your website, there’s a greater chance they will convert. It takes visitors 0.05 seconds to form an opinion about your website. In that time, they’ll decide whether they’re going to stay or go. It’s relatively easy to keep visitors engaged. Here are four ways you can keep visitors on your site longer. Your visitors spend an average of 5.59 seconds looking at your written content. Website visitors don’t read - they scan. Don’t bombard your visitors with content they don’t need right away but give them a way to find it should they want to dig deeper if they choose to. When visitors scan your content, they are doing so in an F pattern. Scanning in an F pattern means they are reading the first few lines followed by the first few words of the following lines searching for the information they came to find. When providing content on the web - photos, titles, headings, and shorter paragraphs all work to break up more extended texts, provide value, and make things easier to scan. Before a visitor clicks off your site, you want them to see your call-to-action (CTA), as this is how you convert those visitors into leads and, hopefully, paying customers. One of the best times to get your customers to take action is after they’ve finished scanning your post, so placing your CTA at the end is ideal. Visitors will leave your site after finding what they’re looking for, but with the appropriate CTA, you’re giving them a reason to stick around longer. Placing your CTA at the end of your content isn’t the only area to put it. Many visitors know they’re going to find a CTA at the end of a web page, but you’ll have readers that don’t want to continue scrolling or reading that long to get to it. One way to battle this is to use a slide-in opt-in. Using a slider-opt-in allows you to place your CTA on the bottom right-hand corner of your website. As the visitor scrolls, so does your CTA - making it always available. If you don’t like the idea of a scrolling, floating CTA, you can always post a CTA at the end of your page introduction or fitting it elsewhere in the article where it works with the heading topic. Who is the admin? You? Then change the name. Give yourself authority. Who likes admin? Probably nobody, to be honest. So, why do you make your visitors fill out a form upon arrival? Don’t slam your visitors with an immediate fill-out form if your desire is to keep them engaged on your website because this isn’t going to do it for you. Do you allow comments on your blog post? We love this idea. When visitors are allowed to comment, that is engagement. It also gives new visitors something to engage with. Just let them comment, though. Don’t use this as your way of gathering leads. Let visitors comment on your posts without having to sign up and hand over their email or social media information. You’ll be shocked at how much more engagement you get. If you want to keep visitors on your site longer and have them visit again, update your site regularly. This includes everything. If a visitor who has been to your site before returns and it looks like there is nothing new, they won’t stay. If they didn’t convert to a lead with their last visit, they’re surely not going to now, and they potentially won’t return ever again. Add new content to your site as often as possible. Even set it up on a schedule for posting. Maybe you want to post on Monday, Wednesday, or Friday. Or, Tuesday or Thursday. Perhaps your ideal schedule is one new post a week and then share older posts on other days. Whatever it is you decide that works best for your brand, do that and stick to it. Keep your website fresh and new. While we realize many brands have the brand colors they stick to for their website, there are other changes you can make outside of branding colors and logos. Some things you can change are: While we don’t recommend that you change your main copy every week, it’s nice to make some minor changes every once in a while to keep things fresh. Vary up your content. Add new photo sets. Tease upcoming events or products. Add countdown timers for big reveals. Keep things interesting. This may seem like a lot of work. It is. That’s where we come in. Carrboro Creative is a results-driven creative agency that offers website care plans, custom website design, brand development, graphic design, SEO, and more. Contact us today for a free quote and let us show you how we can keep your website fresh, keep new visitors rolling in, and care for your website so you can get back to running your business. 1. Scannable Content
2. Strategically Place Your Call-to-Action
3. Get Rid of Admin
4. Update, Update, Update
Wrapping Up
And that’s OK! Your website is your greatest marketing tool, and if you’re not experienced in maintaining your tools, you’re not alone. Most business owners aren’t.
