How to keep visitors on your site with User Experience (UX) SEO
You’ve possibly established how to get users to your site, but keeping them there is a whole different story. 55% of web visitors spend just 15 seconds browsing each page on a website. A pretty sobering thought considering the time, effort and money you’ve spent investing in a good site!
Rather than stressing about it, it’s much better to consider what’s really at play. While it’s clear that you’ve got a narrow window of opportunity to impress visitors based on the aforementioned statistic, there are things that you can do to prolong a visit.
Why is the length of time spent on your site important, you may ask?
Firstly, the less time spent makes a sales conversion less likely, that goes without saying. Secondly, user experience is key to Google when determining top search positions. User experience – also known as UX, measures a user’s browsing experience in terms of positive or negative, and those that lead more towards the latter are penalised.
Google Analytics measures the amount of time someone spends on your website. The longer they spend there, the more likely it is that they are having a positive experience, thus satisfying Google that your website is performing well.
That isn’t the only factor that determines whether or not searchers (and Google) are satisfied with the content. Page loading speed is a further element that can impact, with slow-loading sites deemed to be providing a poor user experience. More often than not, they are; a turtle-speed loading page is extremely off-putting in an era of rapid-moving technology!
There is also mobile optimisation to consider; if your site isn’t mobile responsive, it will be penalised by Google’s mobile SERPs which is hugely detrimental to success considering that over 50% of searches are made with a mobile device.
With the aforementioned factors in mind, we’d like to focus on keeping searchers on your site as this is paramount to overall success rates.
Though 89% of customers begin their buying process with a search engine, it is the content of a site that will entice them to read further and make a purchase. Accessible links mean that they can click through your site with ease, all the while taking them a step further into their journey towards ‘add to basket’. So, the question is how can you achieve this?
Make use of quality video content
Anyone and everyone utilise video content these days, and at times, you might find yourself questioning some of the said content (can we say TikTok?). One of the great benefits of videos is that they encourage people to remain on your page for longer than the average 15 seconds. Embedding a two-minute video, for example, works twofold; aside from encouraging users that are overcome by heavy-text pages, it’s a great way of retaining user attention. And with that, Google will be suitably impressed with the user experience.
However, we strongly encourage you to execute quality footage. Poor or low-quality and irrelevant content is more likely to put users off for good. And don’t think you can fool Google by plastering your pages with video after video amidst minimal content. Google is a bit too clever for such activity, and will most certainly penalise you for it.
A winning strategy is to make your video easily accessible to the user by placing it in a prime position i.e., at the top of your landing page. The second they click on your page they’ll have access to a video which is a win-win.
Utilise Exit Intent Pop-Ups
You only have to mention pop-ups to hear a universal groan, but when they’re used efficiently, they can reduce your bounce rate and encourage users to interact with your site.
Modern pop-ups use exit intent technology. In other words, they cleverly analyse the time spent on your site by users in real time, and having determined when they are about to exit the site, a pop-up is triggered. We’re not talking about the annoying and frustrating pop-ups that lead you to an unrelated page – that would be highly detrimental to your purpose, instead, you can tailor pop-ups to suit accordingly. For example, discounts, offers, lead magnets or links to further relevant pages that will heighten their experience.
A great addition to exit intent pop-ups is that you can provide alternative pop-ups for each landing page. With this, you can tailor pop-ups to reflect specific page content and ensure that you have a suitable trigger for each page visited.
Get interactive!
Offering users something different and interesting is a great way of keeping them on your site, and interactive elements are a tried and tested method of doing so. There’s no set way of doing this as it relies entirely on your content, but interactive quizzes, questionnaires or calculators can be highly beneficial.
Pagination is a method of dividing content into discrete pages for a more digestible read. Unlike infinite scrolling sites, pagination provides a familiarity associated with book reading and offers users sufficient time to consider their next move. Incorporating this design into your website is a great way of forcing interaction; without utilising multiple pages, users are unable to view the page content in its entirety.
Perfect your internal linking
It's virtually the law of SEO to have a strong internal linking structure. Not only is it vital for interconnecting your site, but it is also necessary for signalling to Google which of your pages are high authority.
Sites that don’t lead the user to a new page demonstrate a lack of thought and can make for an uncomfortable browsing journey. Pages that contain accessible internal links make navigation much easier and will prevent users from clicking off your site. It’s also good to be aware of high conversion-rate pages, as you can (and should!) nudge users towards that page.
And finally, we’re probably stating the obvious here, but if you have a specific blog page, be sure to backlink to other relevant blogs where possible. You can engage users for a decent amount of time by gently ushering them from one page to another, all the while keeping them on your website. Who knows, they might stay there for hours!
To conclude, as a marketer or business owner, your main goal should be to convert one-time visitors into customers, and your content is an integral aspect of this process. The longer your visitors stay on your site, the more engaged they’ll be, thus the higher the chance for them to convert.
Hopefully, this offers some insights on how to retain site visitors. By following these best practices, you can effectively engage the most impatient of visitors and convert them into customers.
