In the world of the Internet, one of the most dreaded phrases is “bounce rate.”
A website’s bounce rate measures the percentage of visitors to a website that look at a single page and then click away to another site. If your bounce rate is 50%, that means you have squandered fully half of the visitors you have managed to get to visit your site in the first place.
So, how do you get visitors to stay on your site the first time they come and how do you get them to keep coming back again and again? The simple answer is –you’ve got to make them want to come back.
First Impressions
Just as in the real world, first impressions mean everything on the web. Your business’ home page is your online billboard. On the web, you have approximately five sections to capture your visitor’s attention.
How do you do it? That’s easy:
- Great design
- Great Content
Great Design
Before I get into what makes for great design on the web, let me talk about lousy design. There are all kinds of ways of messing up your website, such as:
- Poor choice of colors (jarring, faded out, etc.)
- Poor choice of fonts (difficult to read, confusing)
- Poor font size (you won’t want to read a website when the font is too small)
- Cluttered
- Poor Navigation
- Poor use of pictures, video and Flash
A poorly designed website is designed to turn traffic away and keep traffic away.
Casio is a terrific company, with great products, but you’d never know it from their website. Its print is almost impossible to read, the navigation is confusing and the only content presented is a bunch of poorly displayed headlines.
Great Content
Why do you subscribe to a particular magazine? Because you have come to trust that it will give you information that is both useful and engaging. Furthermore, you know there will be new information in each issue and that information serves you as its target audience.
Websites need to provide the same kind of service if they want visitors to keep coming back. It is critical that the homepage is updated on a regular basis, giving visitors a reason to come back.
What does this mean for my company’s website?
Your website is a great way to enhance your brand. By creating a site that is both attractive and informative, you create a destination site for your target audience.
It is important to work with a website design company that understands your business and their business. When dyagonal takes on a new client, we learn your business inside out and then develop a site that best serves your business needs. Because we have a team of copywriters on staff, we can help you create the kind of content that keeps people coming back, time and again.