So, you have created a website and did everything by the book? You even have quality posts there, and managed to get external links here and there, yet things are not going quite as planned? Sure people managed to find you and you have a good domain name, but for some reason your website fails to close the deal. The users either do not buy your items or do not subscribe as you planned, or simply don’t leave their e-mails.
How to avoid this you ask? Well, there could be a couple of factors responsible for this spike in bounce rate. Let’s identify some of the common factors and talk about how you can eliminate them. Here are 5 reasons why websites lose their visitors.
Lack of high quality visual content
Sure, content needs to be educational or really entertaining to have some value, however if you want to learn something new why go online, why don’t you simply pick up a book. Well for starters the information can be found easily, but more importantly, online materials have better visual content.
If you do not have high quality images, videos or infographics that exemplify your statements you are not giving users what they came for. Learning new things needs to be fun, and websites need to make the whole experience entertaining, so work on your presentation.
The same applies for online stores. When a shopper is browsing your store, you need to impress them. With all of the technology available nowadays, you can make anything look more awesome in a picture than in real life. In other words, boost your visual content game.
Outdated design
If you recently made a website, it’s highly unlikely that this is the case, but if you haven’t updated your design in while, then you should definitely do so. If you are using the design from 90’s, your website is basically a creepy old house that nobody wants to enter. There are so many visual triggers in web design itself that will affect a user’s decision about whether they should trust you or not.
It’s not optimized for phones
Maybe your web design and content are flawless, but if the website is not optimized for phones and tablets, then a large portion of users simply leave. It’s a terrible mistake, and yet a lot of people tend to neglect this optimization. Just make sure that mobile users can have a satisfying experience on your website, and things will get better.
Too many ads
It’s true that a lot of platforms are ad-driven, so removing ads is not an option, but simply rearranging them so that they are not all over the place is a good course of action. First of all, people will neither trust you or your ads if they are displayed in this fashion. Most of the websites use an ad-lite experience, so you should get on board as well.
Furthermore, when you are going through a particular piece of content and suddenly a big ad appears, one that you can’t immediately turn off, it’s really irritating. Flashing ads in front of users’ faces is just the worst thing you can do, so try to find another way to get your message across.
It’s too slow
Finally, if you are using a theme that loads slow, or if your web hosting provider is not good enough, then your website won’t load as fast as expected. This is highly annoying and unprofessional, so once again people will immediately doubt your credibility. Do some tests, and see how you can increase the speed of your website.
So, you basically need to improve your site’s performance and do some changes design-wise in order to acquire more users. At FirstSiteGuide (NB – I work at FSG) we cover all these aspects of making your site a success, so check out some of our guides.
Photograph by Kaboompics