Once upon a time, having a quality website for your small business was optional, but that is no longer the case. Your website is a vital part of your marketing strategy. It’s important to create an engaging and informative website, because you want to convert your visitors into paying customers. Encouraging users to stay on your website for longer increases your chances of starting a conversation with them and building a relationship. With that in mind, we’ve put together a list of five ways to keep visitors on your small business website for longer.
1) Blog Content
The more content you have to keep your visitors entertained, the longer they will stick around. This may sound daunting, but you don’t have to create an award-winning blog to keep your target audience engaged. Instead, aim to create easy-to-read articles that answer a question or address a key problem that your audience is facing. You could also create buying guides, shopping lists and how-to articles. Aim for 500-700 words per post, and remember to include plenty of internal links to encourage your visitors to keep on reading.
2) Video Content
Creating video content has numerous advantages for small business owners. For one thing, research by Insivia found that viewers retain 95% of a video message vs. just 10% of one that they read in text. Furthermore, a study by Forbes found that 90% of customers agree that a product video helps them reach a buying decision.
Your video content doesn’t have to be Oscar-worthy. Most smartphones have good quality video cameras nowadays, and there is plenty of basic free editing software out there. You could also do a social media livestream and then upload the recording to your site afterwards.
3) Guest Blogging
Inviting fellow business owners to guest blog is a great way to increase brand awareness, reach new audiences and keep viewers on your site for longer.
When selecting a guest blogger, choose a business owner who serves your target audience but is not a direct competitor.
Guest blogs are a great way to diversify your content and gain a quality blog post on an area that is related to your business but may be slightly outside your realm of expertise. It also helps to build trust with your audience.
4) Skimmable Content
There’s something very intimidating about big blocks of text, and this will have visitors swiftly leaving your site in search of something easier to digest.
In order to keep web users engaged, your site content should be skimmable. This means short paragraphs, plenty of sub-headings and appealing images to break up the text. Make sure to select an easy-to-read font in a large enough size, too. These relatively small changes can make a big difference to your bounce rate.
5) Reduce Loading Times
If your website pages take too long to load, visitors won’t hesitate to defect elsewhere. In fact, a study by Akamai found that a one second delay in page response resulted in a 7% reduction in conversion rates. Increase this to three seconds and you could lose almost half of your visitors.
Fortunately, there are simple steps you can take to reduce loading times, such as compressing your images with the help of a free or low-cost plugin. WP Smush It is a great free option for WordPress users.
It may also be worth looking into using a Content Distribution Network. This is a geographically distributed group of servers which combine to ensure faster loading speeds.
Summary
Keeping visitors on your website for longer requires two key steps:
1) Keep your visitors engaged with plenty of informative and entertaining content
2) Make your website as efficient and user-friendly as possible
When working on your website, you should keep your ideal customer in mind at all times. Ask yourself: what would they find helpful? How can you signpost your best offers and pieces of content? What information is most valuable to them?
By creating a website that answers your visitors’ questions and is easy for them to navigate, you will increase the time they spend on your site and, ultimately, your conversion rate.
