What Makes Someone Leave Your Website?
At McCauley Marketing Services, we often emphasize the importance of website design, copywriting, and strong search engine optimization (SEO) is to our clients, since the web is usually the first tool consumers use to find and gather information. How your website looks, accessibility and its navigation are important elements in attracting customers and keeping them coming back for more updated information. The web content works to provide the necessary material for clients and potential clients to learn more about your business– how they get to your website and getting them to stay there is another story. In order to do a successful job of attracting visitors and keeping them active on your page, it’s important to think about what could cause visitors to leave. Below we’ve shared some common reasons that typically cause visitors to quickly exit out of a webpage:
- Too many advertisements
If possible, try to avoid advertisements or be discrete with them. Visitors are often triggered to exit out of a website due to flashing or pop-up ads. It is important that your website content is not covered up by advertisements as it was your content that drew them to your site initially.
- Bad navigation
Navigation should not be complex— this can cause users to eventually become frustrated. Make sure not to scatter your main navigation links throughout your page or bury them in the body text. Grouping navigation in one central area so that it is organized, and including a site map can be helpful for users.
- Boring/outdated content or design
Your website should want to make visitors come back. Your web design does not need all the bells and whistles—simplistic pages can be effective if done correctly. In order to engage visitors, your site should contain interactive elements such as blogs or a discussion forum which should be updated consistently. Remember to update your web content frequently which can increase an interest level in your site. A great way to keep content fresh is by adding a blog that contains recent events, news, or even pictures. Additionally, avoid using “under construction” as it can cause visitors to not come back at all.
- Poor readability
Pages that contain bright colors, dated images, numerous typos, or typefaces that aren’t legible are often a deterrent. Thoroughly organize your pages and consolidate content with short paragraphs, lists, headers, and take advantage of whitespace.
- Audio or video that starts automatically
Eliminate audio and video that streams automatically as most visitors prefer to have the preference to start it themselves.
- Pages that take too long to load
We live in a society that wants “it” and wants it immediately. Same thinking goes for websites—visitors don’t like to sit and wait for pages to load. Though this can often be attributed to a bad internet connection speed of the user, or users with out-of-date browsers, which there’s nothing you can do in that regards. For users with high-speed internet, you can tailor the design and content however you prefer.
By avoiding these content and design mishaps, you may increase traffic and keep them coming back for more. McCauley Marketing Services understands the importance of creating both user and search-engine friendly websites. Our experienced team of web developers, graphic designers, copywriters, and market researchers work closely with clients to identify the appropriate material to showcase their businesses’ assets, improving customer service and customer relationship management.
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