In this post, we share some tips to help you attract and keep website visitors on your site longer, as well as motivate them to take the actions you want them to take.
The German writer Thomas Mann said, “Human behavior makes sense if you think about it in terms of goals, needs, and motives.”
This quote applies to web design. In other words, think about the needs of your potential leads and customers as you’re considering the technical feasibility and economic viability of design solutions. Remember, design should be for people, not for designers.
1. Think About What Your Website Visitors Need
Today you can learn all about your potential customers. Therefore, you can adjust analytics and change the content depending on who has logged in.
Also, you can display specific blocks or menu items depending on who has visited your website. These will be different for a 25-year-old man from New York and a 60-year-old woman from Missouri.
2. Speed up Your Website
Your website should take no more than two seconds to load. If your site loads slower than that, you need to:
- Use images of the appropriate size or crop them
- Save pictures for the web by using Photoshop or compressor.io
- Apply caching
- Exclude unnecessary information
- Limit the use of unnecessary plugins
- Use good, reliable hosting
Also, be sure to check your website using different devices to see how fast it loads on each one.
3. Make Your Website Appear to Load Faster
If you’re choosing between an amazing website design and fast loading speed, and you are tempted to bet on the design, there are a couple of solutions that will help you not to lose customers. Of course, these are only temporary solutions.
- You can make your website look like it’s loading faster by showing the loading progress as a percentage.
- Alternatively, use the page structure known as “skeleton.” In this case, the page will load in stages. First, blurred blocks will appear. Then they become sharper and more visible.
These two solutions work because when website visitors see progress they’re not in such a hurry to leave the page.
4. Emphasize the Clickable Page Elements for Website Visitors
The flat design has one certain disadvantage. That is, it is not always clear to website visitors which elements are clickable and which ones are not. Therefore, you need to think about the best way to arrange hyperlinks so that they are clearly visible. To do this, use underlines, frames, and geometric shapes.
The last thing you’ll want your website visitors to encounter is an error code reading “This Site Can’t Be Reached.” However, there are multiple simple fixes for this problem.
5. Make It Easy for Your Website Visitors
Your website visitors come to your site for their own reasons. Reduce the number of clicks they need to make in order to accomplish what they came to your site to do.
For example, if you sell a software solution that simplifies and facilitates marketing operations (a mailing list, for example), then your offer should load simply and quickly. In short, positive associations contribute to creating an excellent user experience.
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6. Place Contents in Order of Importance
Place information on the page in order of its importance. That is, place more important information near the top of the page. Also, use other ways to visually highlight it sometimes.
One way to do this is to use pop-ups to display messages about successful actions that website visitors take. For example, use a pop-up that reads, “Deleted” or “Added to Recycle Bin.”
7. Change Your Pop-up Message
Yes, we know website visitors find pop-ups annoying. But they work. What’s more, this year pop-ups will go through some changes.
Previously, the main purpose of the pop-up was to get contact details from website visitors and encourage them to buy something. But now pop-ups serve as sales managers.
For example, a pop-up can offer your website visitors a discount. Or it could entice visitors with free shipping or a cool gift. Give your website visitors a good reason to accept your offer here and now. Otherwise, they will leave your page and look for other options.
8. Give Each Header Its Proper Place
Only 50% of website visitors read down to the 1,000 pixels mark near the bottom of the screen. Therefore, use this line wisely. Place more interesting headers near the top of the page. This will entice visitors to read further down the page.
Conclusion
Use these eight tips to keep your website visitors happy and your online business will be sure to thrive.
