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10 Tips to Increase Average Time Spent on Your Website
How to Increase the Average Time Spent on Your Website
The time visitors spend on your site directly affects your conversions and ultimately your profit. If they abandon it after a few seconds, they are probably never coming back.
This is a clear indication that some things need to be fixed. What you as a marketer need to do is turn your site into a place where visitors want to spend time.
But how do you convert a one-time visitor into a loyal customer? How to ensure people spend more time on your website? We’ve got some hacks to help you out!
Tips to Keep Visitors Longer on Your Website
1) Take page speed seriously
No matter how good your content is, it won’t ensure people spend more time on your website if the website takes ages to load. In that case, you need to reduce the loading time.
Check what hosting company we use on this blog to get loading times are under 2 seconds. This is really important especially if you use ads that slow loading speed even more.
The most important steps to achieve this are image compression and using a content delivery network (CDN). When it comes to images, simply compress the ones that are unnecessarily large. CDN has many locations around the world and its purpose is to reduce loading time. It caches the files of your website and delivers the content to your reader using a server that is closest to them.
2) Keep your headlines’ promises
Of course, a click-worthy title is great for your website. However, writing a good headline is not enough to keep visitors longer on your website. The content you create needs to match the title. If it doesn’t, your readers will feel betrayed. They will immediately leave the site for not getting what they expected. Therefore, your content needs to live up to the reader’s expectations.
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3) Make your content interesting
You’ve got only 15 seconds to grab the attention of an average reader. That sounds like too much pressure, doesn’t it? That is why you should make an effort to create content that is smart, funny and different, in addition to being current and relevant.
- Use language that is simple and easy to understand but explore deep topics to keep readers longer your site.
- Readers love humor. Use it when appropriate.
- Speak directly to the reader. In most writing styles, the pronouns ’’you’’ and ’’I’’ are acceptable.
- Original content is always more valuable. Even if you explore the same topics as everyone else, do it in a way that is creative and different.
4) Clean up your design
As we’ve mentioned, you do not have much time to convince your visitors to stay. Therefore, the first impression is crucial. A design that is hard to look at makes visitors give up and go somewhere else. Having a clean, simple, clutter-free design is a must if you want readers to stick around to read your content.
5) Pay attention to your pages’ readability
Interesting content won’t help you engage readers unless it is easy to read. By taking the following tips seriously, you will avoid some of the most fatal blogging mistakes.
- The font size should be large enough for easy reading, yet small enough to reduce unnecessary scrolling.
- Shorter sentences are easier to understand and memorize.
- Each article should contain subheadings, bullet lists, paragraphs and a lot of white space.
- Breaking long paragraphs into smaller chunks makes them easier to read on all devices.
6) Make your site mobile-friendly
Pages that are not-so-mobile-friendly receive lower rankings. That says enough about the importance of optimizing your site for mobile devices. Statistics on mobile usage show that almost 50% of users access content using a mobile device. People feel frustrated and leave a site quickly if it makes them squint, scroll horizontally and vertically, zoom in and out, etc. So, in order to ensure people spend more time on your website, make it suitable for mobile devices.
7) Add internal links
Another way to ensure visitors spend more time on your site and increase bounce rate is internal linking. Each article or page of yours needs to have links to other (relevant) pages or articles on your site. This strategy is great for your website’s SEO. The best part is that you don’t need to buy any tool or plugin to do it.
8) Add good videos and images
When we say you need interactive, engaging content, we are talking about videos and images, among other things.
People love to watch videos. A lot of people would rather watch a video than read text. Interesting videos will definitely ensure people spend more time on your website.
Images are the most engaging type of online content. So, make sure to include high-quality images, vectors, and illustrations, but don’t forget to optimize them first.
9) Offer users content upgrades
This is the reader’s chance to get bonus content by performing a certain action, like signing up for a mailing list, filling out a survey, or registering for a free account. This is a popular strategy many successful online marketers and bloggers have embraced. Its benefits are multiple – it helps you boost user engagement, regain old users, and improve conversion rates.
10) Add a call-to-action (CTA)
Visitors tend to abandon a website as soon as they find the information they were searching for. This is when you should ask them to take action. At the end of each post, you can give them a reason to stay with you with an appropriate CTA. You can suggest staying in touch via your email newsletter or give them a good reason to keep browsing your website.
Just make sure readers notice your call to action. Placing the CTA below the content area where it’s easy to ignore is a common mistake.
Do you want to stay up-to-date with the latest blogging tips? Then, you should join our FaceBook Blogging Group!
About the Author
Amanda Perry is a freelance copywriter whose field of expertise is the world of digital marketing. She collaborates with companies such as Movers Development, helping moving companies reach their full potential. In her free time, she likes to watch old movies and read fashion magazines.