Are Visitors Getting Lost On Your Site?

In my most recent post, I discussed the importance of measuring visitor duration on site. I also emphasized the benefits in keeping users on a website longer and some tactics in how to do so. But I also warned that if marketers discover either ultra-low or ultra-high durations, that it could be a red flag that users are turned off or getting lost within your website. In fact, using some other web metrics, one can better determine if this is the case and can even go as far as diagnosing the problem in order to make adjustments for improvement.

Depending on your category, brands’ number one goal on a website is usually a conversation. This could be a web form, a submission, or a transaction. However, if visitors are spending 5+ minutes on your site and still not converting, there could be a problem. Take a look at some of these metrics that might help you identify where the problem lies:

- Exit page - Is there a specific page where users are constantly leaving? Clearly this page might not be effective and needs a facelift. Determine your top exit pages and discover if design or messaging is not strong enough to encourage a conversion.

- Page views per visit - Are users browsing in and out of pages but cannot seem to find what they are looking for? This is a great metric to examine alongside page duration to see what specific links are being clicked and if visitors seem to be going back and forth without any sort of success.

- Conversions – At the end of the day, this is one of, if not the top goals of your website. If users are spending a great deal of time on your site without actually converting then this is a clear sign that your site should be audited for adjustments.

If users are getting lost within your site, there are some ways to improve the experience. The most top level solution (with many sub-factors) is to enhance the site’s usability. Stoney DeGeyter of SearchEngineLand suggests some tips into increasing a site’s usability: keep it consistent, divide categories clearly, make all navigation elements clickable links, use accurate navigation titles, ensure every clickable link has ALT text, and ensure your search feature works.  By making the overall structure more user-friendly, visitors will not be turned off by the path(s) they need to travel in order to get what they need out of the experience. It is generally acknowledged that web sites which provide the user with useful, well organized, navigable information in a well-structured layout are likely to retain users who access them and also generate repeat visitors.

Amidst these are also some other suggestions to helping site managers develop more effective websites. Web marketer Jakob Nielsen says that the important characteristics of a usable site include simplicity, naturalness and ease of use. If done right, with creative design and effective navigation features, it should result in users not only spending more time on site, but more importantly, finding what they need faster, converting and essentially having a more pleasant website experience. Overall, multiple metrics should be explored together to decide if users are effectively finding what they need. Well-designed sites should keep users engaged while also leading them to a conversion for long-term customer loyalty.

Keeping Users On Your Site Longer

After exploring some of the most well-known web metrics used today, I found myself fascinated by time of visitor on site. This statistic is measured by looking at time stamps, such as when the visitor arrives on the site and when he/she arrives on a new page, either within your site or on a new site completely. Many web marketers want users to spend as much time on their site as possible. And it only makes sense, right?

Benefits of keeping users on a site are plentiful:

- Visitors are learning more about your company, brand and its offerings
- Increases likelihood that they are converting, either through a web form or transaction
- High activity and time spent strengthens your search engine rankings
- Visitors are paying attention to you and not a competitor

So we know it’s important to keep users busy on your site. But how do we do that? There are a number of ways that web content and web design professionals can work together to help boost the length of time that visitors spend on a website. Here are some effective strategies:

- Optimize the site – In this age of broadband bandwidth and 3G and 4G on mobile, no one wants to wait for a site to load. If your site is not optimized to load efficiently, people will immediately bounce. On the contrary, fast load times with easy to navigate site structure will keep users on the site longer and will increase the likelihood of them returning.

- Add videos - Not only does video make content more engaging, but since visitors have to take time to consume the video’s information (usually 2-4 minutes is ideal), it increases duration of time on site. There is an additional benefit of the video posting as well, people tend to understand how to do a particular thing quickly and they tend to visit your blog for any sort of tutorials.

- Make it visually appealing – Sites that have high quality imagery and more simple designs and layouts are typically more ascetically pleasing. Navigation also becomes much more efficient. According to blogger Eric Bailey, a person’s eyes have to be caught before their mind can get involved, and whether webmasters like it or not, visual appeal is one quick, effective way to separate from the competition.

- Write better and longer – Blogs are a great way to attract visitors to a website through fresh, unique content. It also makes your site appear in more search results. By making these posts longer, with rich content, visitors will find value and stay within your site’s walls. Also make sure other site copy is informational with strong language to not deter visitors.

- Internal linking - Internal linking is an important aspect related to average time on site. If there are keywords and tabs that send users to other pages deep within the site, users will continue to find value. People tend to read the posts related to some particular posts and if you attach a link to some of the important words in the blog post, people will click on them.

What’s important to remember is that all brands and categories are different. There is no ideal length of time on site benchmark that brands should be meeting. Brands should instead find the time spent for the majority of converted visitors and then look to that as the goal. Conversely, this metric should not be analyzed by itself. Other metrics could reveal that too much time on site is actually negatively affecting a brand. For example, users might be getting frustrated or lost. Time on site should always be examined with other metrics in mind to truly determine if users are satisfied with their site visit.