5 Reasons People Are Leaving Your Website

You’ve done it. After months of hard work, late nights and early mornings, your website is finally ready. You hit “Publish,” sit back and wait for people to flock to your site.

Days later, you check your analytics and realize that your visitors aren’t staying on your website very long. “Hm. They must not get it,” you reassure yourself. You log out of Google Analytics positive that people just need more time to get used to your site. 

When you sign into your analytics account a week later, you see that your bounce rate is even higher than it was the last time you looked at it. At that moment, you realize that the problem isn’t that people “don’t get” your site. Now, you accept that your website has its own set of problems that are driving people away.

Irrelevant Content

Chances are, you won’t have to search too far or wide to find some of the issues that might be plaguing your website’s ability to retain its visitors. In fact, you may want to start by examining your content to see if it’s at least partially to blame.

Did you use keywords when you prepared your content? If so, you should make sure the content you prepared actually revolves around those keywords. You don’t want to sprinkle keywords into a piece of content that has very little to do with them. If you do, people will be very disappointed when they arrive at your website because your content will have no relevance to what they searched for.

In addition to creating content that relates to your keywords, you must ensure your content is directly relevant and meaningful to the members of your target audience. Your content must solve their problems and satisfy their needs. Your material must educate, not sell. If your content isn’t relevant and meaningful, it will not retain an audience.

Visitors Land on Your Homepage

Have you ever clicked on a link in a SERP and ended up on a site’s homepage instead of the page where the information you wanted to view actually was? If so, you know how frustrating and off-putting it is. Make sure your visitors end up on landing pages that contain the information they’re searching for rather than your homepage if you want them to stay on your site for a while.

If you doubt that this is an important task, consider the following. About 84 percent of searchers would prefer to wind up on a landing page or a blog post instead of a homepage.

Your Site Isn’t Mobile-Friendly

It’s no secret that mobile is responsible for more Internet consumption than desktop. And that’s not expected to change anytime soon. If your website isn’t mobile-friendly, it’s unrealistic for you to expect people to stay on your site for very long.

In general, mobile-friendly sites have the following traits:

• Responsive web design
• Easy usage for mobile visitors
• Fast load times
• Very few or no mobile pop-ups

If your site lacks any or all of the traits just mentioned, you have some work to do to lower your bounce rate.

Your Pages Lack a CTA

If people aren’t staying on your site long enough to convert, it may be because your pages don’t have a clear call to action. Do you want people to buy something or should they share their email to learn when the product will be available to the public? Your visitors won’t know unless a webpage has a clear, visible call to action.

Your Site Is Too Slow

We mentioned that fast load times are an important feature mobile-friendly sites must have, but page load speed is worth mentioning again. If it takes too long for your webpages to load, you can rest assured that your visitors will return to their SERPs to find a website that loads faster.

You can test your load times by using Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool. This handy tool will provide some actionable tips you can use to improve your load times.

Use Our Website Design Services

Whether you want a new website or you need assistance with getting your current site to retain its visitors, we can help. We offer a full suite of web design services to businesses competing in many industries. Read about our web design services and schedule a consultation with NW Media Collective, Inc. today.