Is your website driving people away? Here’s how to fix it.
You work hard on creating fantastic content that gets people to your website. But what happens once they land on your homepage?
Does your site entice them to stay? Or are you unwittingly driving people away?
If your bounce rates have been getting uncomfortably high and visitors just aren’t sticking around long enough to discover why you’re awesome, it’s time to make some changes.
In this post, we’ll take a look at the top reasons people are scrambling away from your website and how you can fix it.
What’s Making Your Visitors Leave in a Hurry?
People don’t just click off a page for no reason.
We leave because the banners ads are taking up way too much space or because the video that started autoplaying nearly destroyed our eardrums.
So what are the most common reasons for leaving a website?
1. Slow loading speed
A two second delay in load-speed can increase bounce rates by 103%. Things move even faster on mobile — 53% of visitors will leave if your site takes more than 3 seconds to load. The faster you can make your site, the better — Google aims for loading speeds of half a second.
So if you’ve seen a worrying uptick in your bounce rate recently use a tool like the Pingdom Website Speed Test or Google’s PageSpeed Insights to check your loading speed.
If you need to make change, speak to your hosting provider and look into a Content Delivery Network that covers the regions your audience lives in. If you draw an international audience, you’ve got to check loading speeds from different places — just because your site is lightning fast in Sao Paulo, doesn’t mean it works well in Barcelona.
2. Confusing layout
When a visitor lands on your site, how easy is it to find what they are looking for? How intuitive is your interface?
Arngren isn’t inherently unclear about what it does — it’s fairly easy to tell that it’s an e-commerce site selling goods. But would you shop there?
The search bar is impossibly tiny, the products are packed together tighter than a mosh pit, and the image quality leaves something to be desired.
Or would you rather shop here? Everlane’s interface is clean, the images are big and high-res, and the site uses white space and neutral colors to enhance the products and relax the eye.
How is your website layed out? Does it make it easy to find what you need? Is it nice to look at?
Taking the time to make your design appeal to your ideal customer shows them that you:
a) Care enough about them to actually research what they want.
b) Are willing to invest time and effort in creating something they’ll enjoy.
3. Unclear about what you do
When a visitor lands on your page, you have about seven seconds to get their attention. In that time, you need to hold their attention long enough to tell them what you do and how staying on your site will help.
If I can’t figure out what your site does immediately, there’s no reason to stick around. So, be as clear as possible — Snappa’s homepage is a great example of the perfect amount of info.
The copy is super clear and concise and tells me exactly what this software does. If I want to learn more I have the option of watching a short video — and this is all before I scroll down.
You can tell that this page has been designed with the user in mind, so focus on your visitor and tell them what they need to know as quickly and clearly as you can.
4. Your website isn’t optimized
Your site needs to work equally well on desktops, phones, and tablets because if it doesn’t people will leave.
According to one study, 48% of users feel you don’t care about your business if your site isn’t optimized for mobile and 61% would leave if they couldn’t find what they are looking for fast.
A responsive site is a must whatever industry you are in, so focus on creating a great experience regardless of what device it’s viewed on.
5. Your security doesn’t cut it
So far this year over 13.5 million websites have been hacked. By the time you read this post, this number’s probably gone up significantly.
With big breaches in security like the 2017 Equifax hack and breaches in trust like the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica Scandal, visitors need to feel safe on your site. They need to know you’ll do your part to protect their data.
If you haven’t already, it’s time to upgrade to HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure). Not only will your visitors feel safer, it will help your with SEO because HTTPS has been a ranking factor for Google since 2014.
6. You aren’t creating a personalized experience
You are competing for your visitor’s attention against dozens of brands and thousands of cat videos.
If you want to earn that attention, you need to stand out and create a memorable experience.
Most websites look exactly the same to everyone that lands on them — so if both of us headed over to Cisco’s site right now, we’ll probably be greeted by the exact same homepage.
It doesn’t help that the typical page is filled with all sorts of clickable distractions.
This is Unbounce’s homepage and as far as pages go, it’s a pretty great one. It loaded fast, the copy’s clear and concise, and they use HTTPS. As an added bonus, they’ve even got two clickable calls to action that lead off to different funnels based on your interests.
However, they also show another eight clickable items — and that’s before you go anywhere near the drop down navigation menus nestled under “Product” and “Learn.”
That’s a lot of choices and while this information is important for some customers, it’s too distracting for others. This is why creating a personalized experience based on each visitor’s current needs is so important.
When you head over to the Landbot.io homepage, it looks a little different. Like Unbounce, we tell you what the website is about straight away but instead of offering you too many options from the get-go, we start a conversation.
This chat helps us understand what you are looking for and take you there, tailoring your experience on our site to your unique needs right now.
How can you make your own site feel more personal? Consider options like adding live chat or creating your own conversational experience with Landbot.io. (We know what we’d do!)
Your Website is an Incredible Asset — Make it Work for You
You and your website should be the perfect team.
Your site is the sales rep that never sleeps. The persuasion machine that can help turn visitors into leads and customers.
That’s why it’s so important to look at it from your visitor’s perspective and craft something that works for them — a site that loads fast, is easy to understand and navigate, and helps them find what they need quickly.
