Attracting a potential customer is hard, grabbing their attention and retaining them is even more difficult. If you’re having trouble getting visitors to stick with you, consider whether you’re making any of the five common mistakes below.
1. Slow loading speed
Nobody likes a slow website and you only get one chance to make a first impression. If a potential customer visits your site and is hit with a webpage that is slow to load, chances are they’ll look elsewhere.
With more and more people taking to the internet, it’s vital that page loading speed is taken into account when developing a new website. Page loading speed also plays a massive part in search engine optimisation (SEO). Google tends to rank sites that load quickly higher than sites that don’t.
2. Design
One of the main and obvious reasons people shy away from visiting your site comes down to the design. Web design trends tend to change yearly and keeping up with the trends can be a difficult task. If you want visitors to make use of your website, or return in the future, your website needs to look the part.
The design of your site is the first thing the visitor will see and visitors tend to trust a website more if it looks like it’s kept up to date visually, whilst at the same time useful to them.
Research has shown that it only takes 50 milliseconds for visitors to form an opinion about the visual appeal of a web page.
3. Navigation
The main navigation should be in a clear spot. Most websites tend to have the navigation at the top of the site, above, below or in line with the logo. The main navigation should be simple and clear and labelled accordingly.
Poor navigation is one of the main reasons visitors leave websites before they would have liked. Using a navigation that is logical and intuitive makes it easy for the user to navigate through your pages. When a visitor comes to your website it should be obvious what your business does and what the visitor is supposed to do next – the call to action.
4. Content
Your website might tick all of the above points, but if it isn’t updated on a regular basis with fresh and engaging content you could still be pushing potential visitors away.
Having a blog or a news section on your website is a great way of adding and ensuring content is constantly updated. The frequency of updates may vary depending on how often your visitors are returning. Once you’ve decided on a publishing schedule, it’s important that you stick to it, whether this is daily or weekly updates.
Make sure your visitors always have something new to engage with.
5. Poor mobile experience
According to Google, more searches now take place on mobile devices than on computers in 10 Countries. Making sure that your site is fully responsive and working across all forms of tablets and mobile devices is now a must.
A recent survey found that:
Since April 2015, Google now penalises websites that aren’t mobile friendly. This tends to mean that your website will rank lower in searches, which in effect means you’ll lose customers, traffic and ultimately business.
If any of the above apply to you, then chances are you’re missing out on a large chunk of your target audience. Get in touch with us below and we can talk you through the various options we have to help you increase and claim back those visitors!
