Ok, so you have struggled a lot to drive traffic to your website, and you finally see some results. But if you look at your analytics software stats you see that most of your visitors don’t spend more than 10-20 seconds to read… This can be very frustrating and it is a point where some new site owners quit, thinking that this is not for them.
Assuming that your site has original and interesting content, let’s try to figure out the reasons why this happens.
The Design
The design layout can be one major factor in determining your visitors to stay. If you have an inadequate color scheme, ugly fonts and composition, your visitors will leave your site the next second, and won’t even have the chance to quickly “scan” the content. Also, the design, like the content, must be unique. Don’t be satisfied with a default template; even if your starting point is a template do your best to adapt it to fit your website topic and not look like hundreds (or maybe even more) sites around the internet.
The Navigation
-Keep it simple! Nobody will spend more than 5-10 seconds trying to figure out how to navigate through your website.
-Always keep a link that will drive a visitor back to the homepage and try not to deep link too much.
-You must quickly give your audience some options after having finished reading something. Some “related posts” or “related articles” at the end of each posts could do it.
Writing and text formatting
The first thing that catches your visitor’s attention is the title; but if you fail to keep them interested within the first paragraph they will probably navigate some place else; you have to keep them focused line by line, paragraph by paragraph.
And speaking of paragraphs, it is best not to format your text as a long and continuos story; split your articles in paragraphs and people will read them all. This has probably something to do with a natural “laziness” of a human being, since un-interupted text seem to be longer and more difficult to read.
“Accentuate” some important words of your text either by color, or weight (bold, strong). This is good especially for people who are always in a hurry and don’t have the patience to read everything. They just read it “in diagonal” and if they are not able to make sense of what they are reading they leave. Believe it or not, there are lot of them act like this.
Entertain your audience
Depending on the niche of your website you can chose different kind of tricks to do it, starting from funny pictures, short movies or just a little sarcasm here and there.
Don’t be afraid to put a little humor in your content even if you have a business related website (but the humor itself must be somewhat related to the actual content, and don’t over do it). It will make article sound a little less impersonal and your audience will feel “closer” to you. I know I have to do a little improving on this myself.
Freebies
If you are able to provide something free for your visitors, do it! And do it on a regular basis, so visitors will come back to check if you have update your “free stuff” section.
Interaction
If you own a blog or a forum, interact with your users.
Try to respond quickly to their questions and thank them for the feedback.
Don’t delete the comments of people that disagree with you. Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that you should approve comments with vulgar language or spam. If people express an opinion that is different from your own engage in a debate. This not only will make visitors to return to your website, but it can also be a form of link baiting that can bring you more traffic.
Technorati Tags: Increase Traffic, How to make your visitors stay, Returning visitors
