Super excited to bring on a guest post from Michelle Arios of Bizdb to chat about some bulletproof ways to keep your visitors on your website longer!

---

The longer people stay on your website, the more likely they are to spend with you. If people pop in for a few minutes and disappear, you’re missing an opportunity to turn a casual browser into a devoted customer.

Getting people to stay (especially if they’re a part of your target demographic) doesn’t have to be hard work. Making a few modifications to your website will improve user experience and give them a reason to hang around or come back more often.

5 Bulletproof Ways to Keep Your Visitors on Your Website Longer

1. Provide a Variety of Content

Text is one of the most valuable mediums through which to convey an informative and detailed message. Despite this, many people aren’t readers. They might feel inclined to read something if it accompanies another piece of content that took hold of their attention, but providing a wide variety of content is the only hook you have to catch those people.

Video content is increasingly more prevalent because it provides an immersive experience. Many videos compile text, images, moving pictures, and audio accompaniments to cater to every possible learning style. This means that people are effectively able to retain more from a video, perceiving videos to provide the most value. When you’re attempting to teach or persuade your readers, you can’t afford to forego video content.

Some people are easier to please. They like memes and funny gifs to break up large blocks of content. If the content is shareable and the gifs or memes are unique, people might even want to save them and pass them along to their friends. Allowing yourself to become a goldmine of funny and useful things will encourage people to keep browsing. Even if they don’t immediately shop with you, they’ll regard your brand or your message as friendly and personable. They’ll want to visit often.

2. Let Them Know What You Want Them To Do

When calls to action are hard to complete, or even worse, seemingly absent, people are less likely to follow through with them. If the only call to action you display is on the page for purchasing your product or service, there’s no guarantee that people will naturally stumble upon it or understand why purchasing is the best decision for them by the time they get there.

Make a list of all the ways you monetize your visits, whether it’s through products, services, or referrals. Every piece of content on your website should (at least loosely) incorporate some kind of call to action. What do you want people to do? What part of your website are you attempting to draw them to?

Make your message clear and easy. Even if your call to action is a free download or trial, you’ll still need to ensure that you’re putting an adequate amount of effort into leading people to and through the process.

3. Make it Easy to Browse

Your website might contain anything and everything your readers will ever want, but they won’t know it if it’s hard to find. They might not have the patience to find out if your loading times are slow or your website feels unsecure. One of the most important aspects of keeping users on your site is user experience, and your visitors may feel that your website is lacking.

If you have slow loading times, you might need to perform a bit of a cleanup. Remove any unused plugins or features that contribute to loading time, but don’t add any value to your site. Optimize your website for mobile to improve loading times on smartphones. If this optimization isn’t included with your hosting or your template, hire a web designer to modify your website to meet Google’s standards for mobile optimization.

The organization of your website needs a smooth flow. Be sure that your menus are intuitive and that every link is under the right umbrella. If you aggregate posts or content on your front page, be sure to lead with your most interesting pieces of content, and show related content at the bottom of each post. This will send your visitors on an immersive voyage.

4. Do What Your Analytics Tell You to Do

People already told you what they love about you. All you need to do is listen. Check your analytics to see what kind of content played best with your audience. Your analytics will practically allow you to become a mind reader. What did they like? What did they comment on? What did they share? How much traffic did that piece of content get?

Use that as a formative example for the rest of your content. When you find something that works, provide as much similar content as possible. You’re giving people what they want while simultaneously giving them a reason to spend more time with you.

5. Let People Be Lazy

The internet is reducing people’s attention spans. Oftentimes, they’re looking to find one thing and nothing more. If they’re visiting for entertainment purposes, things need to be inherently fun enough to keep them from getting bored and clicking over to your competitor. There will always be people who want to do an information deep dive and glean as much as they possibly can from your content, but there are others who always feel in a hurry and want to get the answers they came for at a glimpse.

Make all of your content easy to skim. Use clear subheadings, gather your thoughts, and utilize bulleted lists or takeaways to make complicated or nuanced pieces of content easy to digest from the beginning. Some people don’t want to use a magnifying glass or a fine toothed comb just to get an answer to their question, and by optimizing your content for ease of quick browsing, you’re satisfying people who are in a rush.

Getting people to stick around is a lot like being a great party host. You need to provide a little bit for everyone’s tastes, and make it so enjoyable that people don’t want to leave. Let the people tell you want they enjoy the most, and base your strategy around appeasing them. They’ll love you for it.

Let us know which of these methods you’ve tried and if you’ve seen results.