Blog/Keeping Web Readers Happy

How does your website guest know he’s overstayed his visit?

9 hints he won’t ignore.

We’ve all had guests that overstayed their welcome. And usually a not-so-discreet yawn, or mention about tomorrow’s workday, was enough to get them searching for their coats.

How do you get website guests to know it’s time to leave? Simply break the rules of good web design and content. Do this and your web visitors will be fleeing your site in a hurry.

It’s been reported that visitors stay on websites for an average of less than 15 seconds. Of course, your goal is just the opposite; you want your web visitors to stay for a long time. The longer web readers stay on your site the more likely they are to respond to a call to action, make a purchase, or bookmark your site so they can return to it in the future.

Even though writing is still an art, creating great content for a website is part science. There are certain things you need to do, or your visitors will become unhappy and leave.

When your website guest discovers these problems with your site, he’ll quickly head for the virtual door.

1.     No thought has been given to why he visited your site.

If you have a website for a business or service, you can be sure of one thing: People are not visiting your site because they care about what you want to tell them. They are visiting your site because they have questions they want answered. And not only do they want to find the answers … they want to find the information fast. If this doesn’t happen it’s usually because you either didn’t anticipate your prospects’ needs, or your site content is not written properly – it cannot be easily scanned for information.

Want to make your web visitor leave? Don’t have useful information on your site, but if you do, make it hard to find.

2.     He doesn’t want to hear about how wonderful your business or practice is. He wants to know what you can do for him.

If you want to turn off your customer, make sure your copy is sprinkled with lots of “we” and “our” words. Your reader will not want to see this unless they are visiting your “About Us” page. A reader will become engaged when the website talks about their own needs, and how your company/service can meet them. This will make you an ally and a helper. They will see that you are there for them. A web visitor wants to read words like “you” and “your” so they can quickly understand what’s in it for them.

Want to make your web visitor leave? Talk about yourself and your business; tell your reader how wonderful you are at every turn. Leave their needs unaddressed. Don’t let them know how you can help them.

3.     He finds your content confusing, uninspiring, or just poorly written.

Great content that is engaging, informative, helpful, and scannable will keep your web readers happy. Your web reader will not put up with content that’s all flash and no substance or is boring or dull. No one will entrust you to help them if your site is sloppy and poorly written. What does that say about the way you do business and treat your customers?

Want your web visitor to leave? Fill your site with boring, dull, and uninspiring content. And while you’re at it, throw in a few typos for good measure.

4. He thinks you wrote for the search engines and not for him.

Using appropriate keywords on your website page is needed for good search engine ranking. But just because a real person finds your website doesn’t mean he will read it.

Using keywords too frequently, with the express purpose of gaining high ranking by the search engines, is known as “keyword stuffing.” Not only have the search engines learned how to recognize this, they might even penalize your site by lowering its ranking when keyword stuffing is detected.

A good way to tell if you are keyword stuffing is to read the copy out loud. If copy sounds unnatural, silly, or forced when you read it (due to overuse of keywords) you probably are guilty of keyword stuffing. Stop it!

No one likes keyword stuffing; not the search engines and not your reader.

Want your web visitor to leave? Follow this misguided practice and your website reader will become annoyed and leave quickly … that is, if the search engines even let him find you in the first place.

5.     His eyes start to hurt when he reads your text content.

When readers look at a computer screen for a long time their eyes become tired. You can contribute to this problem by having text content that simply is not user friendly.

Having paragraph text that is centered on the page, rather than along the left margin, is much more difficult on the eyes. Your eyes and brain will naturally expect the next line to begin at the left margin; when you go to find the rest of the sentence and it isn’t where you expect it to be, it will make your eyes even more tired.

If lines of text are too long or too short, this also will make the text more difficult for the eyes to follow. This is true for fully justified text as well. The uneven spacing between some words can cause the eyes to tire.

On a website, it is import for the font size to be large enough for comfortable reading. You also want to have good contrast between your text and web background.

If you want your web reader to leave, make sure their eyes will feel tired when reading your content. 

6.     He can’t find the information he wants because your text is not scannable.

If you’ve ever read about website content writing, you’ve probably come across the term “scannable” text. Text that is scannable allows the reader to quickly glance over the page and quickly find the information he is after.

Scannable text uses different formatting features:

• – headlines
• – subheaders
• – bulleted lists
• – bold typeface
• – shorter paragraphs
• – white space

People read websites very differently than they read articles or books. When people visit a website, they are looking for specific information. They visually scan the site to quickly find the information they want. A visitor probably won’t want to read everything on the page; just what is interesting to them.

Frustrate your reader and he will happily leave without the information he came for, or the intent to ever return.

If you want your website visitor to leave, don’t make your content scannable. Present the reader with long blocks of text. Force them to read through your entire page to find the snippet of information they want.

7.     His eyes find a specific header, but the information he wants doesn’t follow.

Part of making a scannable website is the use of headers and subheaders. Well-placed keywords in these headers can boost SEO results; but these headers must properly signal the information that is found next.

If you want to alienate your web readers, misuse the headers. Instead of signaling to your readers what information they will find in the following text, ignore what the header states or implies; then have the following text discuss a totally unrelated subject.

8.     He wanted to follow a link, but it was broken.

When a reader wants to learn more about something on your website, they will happily click on a link. The link is usually a sign that they are about to go to a page that contains lots of information on the topic they want to learn more about. But what happens if the link is broken?

When a web visitor clicks on a broken link, they become frustrated. Here they thought they were finally going to get lots more information, but instead there was no information. Expectations are thwarted and the reader becomes very annoyed.

A broken link on a website means that the website is being poorly maintained. The web reader may begin to doubt the accuracy and timeliness of all the information on the site.

If you want your web readers to leave, don’t bother to fix broken links on your site. Loose your credibility with a quick click.

9.     He had to wait too long for the website page to appear.

If potential web readers need to wait too long for your page to load, they may not even wait around to visit your site. After all, there are many other websites competing for their attention. Why should a potential visitor wait for a business/practice that doesn’t even respect his time?

The most common reason that sites take a long time to load is that images have not been optimized. Even one unoptimized image can severely increase page load time. If your website has a slow load time of over 6 seconds you need to have the page optimized. Lots of people won’t wait around for it to appear.

If you want to make your web visitor leave, maybe you should make sure he won’t even see your site to begin with!

Now that you know the 9 best ways to make your website visitors leave, it’s time to ask yourself this question:

What am I doing to make my web visitors stay?

Laura Elton is now a full-time freelance content writer specializing in website content, articles, and blog posts. While she has always respected technology, her number one professional passion has always been writing. Previously, as owner of Laura Elton Marketing & Web Design, Laura developed many websites using HTML and CSS and wrote great content. Reach her at laura@lefreelancewriter.com or visit her at LinkedIn.