How to keep visitors on your website longer

If you’ve ever looked at a Google Analytics report, two of the key factors are time on page and bounce rate. It can be very frustrating to spend hours composing what you believe is a masterful blog post and then discover that most visitors hang around for less than a minute. So that begs the question – How do I keep visitors on my website longer? What can I do to help them stay on the page?

• Improve your design so that it’s easy to read your content
• Stick with a white background
• Add whitespace around your content so it’s easy on the eyes
• Increase the font-size and line-height
• Use a standard font that is easy to read
• Create better content
• Look at Google Analytics – maybe there’s a disconnect between what visitors expect to see on the page and what is actually there.
• Create helpful content
• Try writing longer blog posts
• Make sure your headlines are relevant to the page or blog post
• Add section titles so it’s easy for a reader to scan the content on the page
• Use visual media on your posts such as videos, images, infographics, slideshows, etc.
• Link to other related blog posts on your site
• Open external links in new windows
• Check for 404 errors – if people search for a page that for some reason no longer exists, create a custom 404 page with some unique content

Keeping visitors on your website and reducing bounce rate is mission critical to your website’s success. Engaged visitors are more likely to sign up for your services, purchase your products, or tell others about the awesome experience they had with you.