Your website is the face of your online business and you’ve put hours and hours of hard work to design and develop it. But for your visitors it is just a matter of few seconds, to be precise less than 5 seconds, to decide if your website is worth their time or not.
A website gets just 2-3 seconds to impress visitors and grow interest in them. And in these few seconds, you need to grab attention, convey your message and make them want to stay and check your website in detail.
Pretty difficult! Right? In this post we try to answer the following questions:
- How to make people spend more time on my landing page?
- Why most people are leaving my website in the first 5 seconds?
- What are the things you need to ensure visitors stay on your website.
Optimize the loading speed of your web pages
If your webpage takes more than 4 seconds to load be sure that you have lost a considerable a amount of potential clients. Research proves that people abandon pages that take time to load and on an average online buyer expects a web page to load in 2 seconds or less.
To make people stay on your website it’s important to first quickly load your web page to ensure your visitors don’t quit before seeing your website even once.
Make a Great First Impression
There is a saying that ‘First impression is the last impression ‘. This phrase holds true in case of online businesses. Very rare there is a chance that a website that looks awful does a good business, that’s pure luck and nothing else.
To pass the 5 second test, it’s important to have that first impression right.
We suggest that make your website visually attractive using colour combinations, images and design that syncs with your overall website. The ideal is to capture people’s attention without confusing them! Don’t be scared to experiment with your design till the time it is impressive, memorable, and unique.
Make use of eye-catching visual aids which make people want to stay and check your website.
Plan an Expressive, Meaningful and Concise Message above the Fold Area
According to research Website users spend 80% of their time looking at the information above the page fold. This clearly indicates that website visitors are more likely to spend major part of their time reading the information provided in the first fold itself.
Make sure you include your USP (Unique Selling Point), what you offer and how it will benefit your potential clients in a language which is easy to understand.
Visitors have a short attention span and considering reading and scrolling extra activities there are chances they stick to only what is visible in the first instance so make sure you include everything that is important to make visitors stay on your website in the first fold only.
Highlight What You Offer through Clear Headlines
Website visitors will not put in so much effort to read through all the paragraphs to find out what you have to offer, they expect to see that right when they arrive.
Having a short crisp and informative headline is a must to make your audience realize that they are on the right page. Your headline must effectively communicate what’s in it for the visitors and what is the benefit that they are going to derive. Don’t rely on your gut feeling while choosing headlines for your website; test the headlines using A/B testing and use whichever gives you the best result.
Research proves that 79% of the people just skim through the page so make sure your headlines are simple, concise and informational.
Offer Clear, Intuitive, Easy to Use Navigation
One thing that your visitors expect the moment they land on your web page is to have easy and clear navigation options.
Your top navigation bar must have all the important links that might be of interest to your visitors like other related services, contact us option, home etc. Your website’s navigation must be intuitive and easy to use.
Avoid Using Too Much Text: Use Videos, Graphics Instead
If your web page has a lot of content in the form of paragraphs, and long texts without any breaks than be ready to face a high bounce rate.
Simple reason is that visitors aren’t willing to read so much of content to understand what you offer. To make them stay on your website it’s important to highlight all the information explicitly that they want to see.
Make use of images/graphics to communicate your message visually. Optimize your content to reduce length and make scanning of your page easier.
Uploading an ‘Explainer Video’ (as we have on the home page of this website) is another great example of making your web page visually attractive and informative without adding to the length of your content. Videos can be used to showcase your core functionalities; company overview, products etc.
Use Graphics / Images that Support the Text – Avoid Using Cheap Stock Images
Eight out of ten people quickly take a glimpse of the images/headings to understand what the company offers, and only two of ten read the content in detail.
To pass the 5 second test the graphics or images that you use on your web page must communicate and support your content. Instead of using common stock images make sure you use relevant, high quality, unique photos that actually represent who you are and what you offer.
Optimize Your Website to Work on Mobiles & Tablets
Research has proven that Mobile Searches have gone up by as high as 500% in the last 2 years and it is expected to grow even further. So mobile devices and tablets are one such area which you can’t afford to ignore. Just getting a responsive design won’t solve the problem here, it is critical to optimize your web page to deliver the ideal user experience on all devices.
Responsive Website Design is incredibly important, and you should test your mobile and tablet version to check how the headlines, images appear and what is the appropriate font to be used etc.
A desktop version is completely different from a mobile/tablet version, so it is important to test in order to ensure it ranks high on usability and passes the 5 second test with ease.
For more information or for help with your own website engagement please contact us.
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