3 Website Elements that Will Make Site Visitors Stay
The aesthetic elements of your website do not complete its effectiveness as a portal for information or as a marketing tool. You still need other elements to complete your site so you can reel in your site visitors to stay for more than two minutes. Here are three of them:
Website Element #1: Navigation
Effortless navigation is very important in making your target audience stay on your website. Step into the shoes of your potential site visitor. See to it that everything can be found easily. This can be done by having a simple and clean navigation bar right at the top of your web page. It may also be useful if you have a navigation bar on the footer of your website and if you have a search box at the upper right corner of your homepage.
Steer clear from having too many navigation options. It is best if you do not have more than two levels to your navigation system as these could overwhelm you visitors and cause them to leave.
Website Element #2: Consistency
Consistency is one of the vital factors in creating a website. All of your site’s elements like colours, layouts, fonts and their sizes should be consistent starting from your homepage right down to your internal pages. Your navigation system must be in the same location on all web pages so it will be a breeze for your site visitors.
Website Element #3: Content
When people search online, they are usually searching for information. Best case scenario is they are searching for your product or services in order to make a purchase right now. However, on average, only 10% of the visitors to your website are people searching to make a purchase. That means a massive 90% are looking at your website for such other reasons as site shopping, simple surfing or looking on as your competition.
When you think of content, think of your human readers before thinking of search engine optimisation. You need your website to be read and understood by your site visitors first. If your website is friendly to humans, search engines will pick that up and send high quality traffic to you.
Writing online content can be quite different to writing for print-based media. People tend to scan through web content quickly, not reading word for word, so headings, sub-headings and bullet points are extremely important since this is what is most likely to be read.
You should also work at providing attention-grabbing headlines. When people search online, they want the information they need quickly. The headline is simply there to grab attention and get people to read the rest of the content. Most people won’t read past the first two paragraphs. So, if your website’s headlines and first paragraphs do not answer such questions as “what’s in it for me” and “so what”, your visitors will go to the next website.
