The goal of every website is to market your business effectively and to compel prospective customers to take action by contacting you. So, when you’ve put time and money into your website only to see your Key Performance Indicators take a hit, you’re left wondering “Is it me?”
Whether you’re concerned about an abysmal bounce rate, or you just can’t seem to entice the visitors who click around and read your website to follow up with any action, more often than not your website is at fault. Here are three reasons people abandon your website and what you can do about it.
57 percent of users abandon a site that takes more than 3 seconds to load. This might seem harsh, but think about your own web search habits. If you are looking for information about a purchase you’re planning to make, would you wait a for a website to load to see if it’s good information? Maybe not. And if you did, it’s because you recognize the name brand or particular author.
If you think load time is an issue on your computer, it could be even worse when viewing your website on a mobile device. Chances are, your smartphone loads your website slower than a desktop or laptop might.
When you employ an online marketing strategy to bring new users to your website, you don’t necessarily have the brand authority in place to ask users to wait several seconds for your page to load. Your website needs to load quickly so your prospects don't have to wait. To make sure you aren’t losing valuable leads, use a tool like PageSpeed Insight, which allows you to evaluate your page load speed and receive feedback on how to increase your website’s performance.
Your company might be well-respected. Your company may be the leader in your field. But if your website design is dated, your words don’t focus on your ideal customer, and your website is confusing to navigate, you're losing sales.
Viewing a website happens on many levels. There’s an instinctual reaction that readers have within the first five seconds as a result of the graphics, colors, and style you’ve presented yourself with, as well as the placement of the words you’ve chosen to use.
There’s also their reaction to the words themselves. There's more to copywriting than copy/pasting the same description your company has had for the past five years. It’s about speaking directly to your ideal target customer in a way they find engaging and interesting, speaking more about your customers and their needs than you do about your own company.
Each of these elements play a part in your overall website design and organization, the difference between a cohesive, relaxing experience and a stressful, short one.
Blogging is a vital part of content marketing, and not just because it has SEO benefits. It’s also a way to get your visitors' attention. Because your blog focuses on possible solutions to your ideal prospect's business problems, it's much more relevant to them than learning about your company history.
For example, a visitor looking for a website redesign may feel lukewarm about your homepage, but sees your blog feed that you’ve recently posted. He's been researching solutions, including solutions your company provides, and is curious about your perspective, so he clicks through. After reading that post, he may click to other related posts, where he learns more and more about your organization. Trust is formed and you improve your changes of getting that business.
If you’re tracking your web analytics and sales funnels and wondering why you get visitors but no follow-up action, there’s a strong chance it’s your website. Investing time into speeding up your page load time, coordinating stronger graphics and copy, and refreshing your blog are sure ways to reduce your rate of abandonment.