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 let website guests know it’s time to leave? Break the rules of good web design and content. Do this and your web visitors will know it’s time to leave your site.
Reports indicate that visitors spend less than 15 seconds on average on websites. 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, writing great content for a website is part science. There are certain things you must do, or your visitors will become unhappy and leave.
When your website guest discovers these problems with your site, they will quickly head for the virtual door.
1. You haven’t considered why readers visit your site.
If you have a website for a business or service, you can be sure of one thing—people aren’t visiting your site because they care about what you want to tell them. They are visiting your site because they have specific questions they want answered.
And not only do they want to find the answers . . . they want to find the information fast. If readers can’t quickly find their answers, it’s usually because either you didn’t anticipate your prospects’ needs, or your site content is not written properly.
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. They don’t read about want you can do for them. Instead, you talk about how wonderful your business or practice is.
If you want to turn off your customer, make sure you sprinkle your content with lots of “we” and “our” words. Your reader won’t want to see this unless they are visiting your “About Us” page.
Instead, a reader will become engaged when the website talks about their own needs, and how your company/service can help them. 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. They find your content confusing, uninspiring, or just poorly written.
Great content that’s engaging, informative, helpful, and scannable will keep your web readers happy. They won’t put up with content that’s all flash and no substance, or is boring or dull.
No one will trust your business or practice to help them if your site is sloppy and poorly written. After all, what does that say about the way you do business and treat your customers?
Want your web visitor to leave? Fill your site with uninspiring content. And while you’re at it, throw in a few typos for good measure.
4. They think you wrote for the search engines and not for them.
Good SERP results require the use of appropriate keywords on your website page. But just because a real person finds your website doesn’t mean they’ll read it.
Using keywords too frequently, with the express purpose of gaining high ranking by the search engines, is known as “keyword stuffing.” Search engines not only learned how to recognize keyword stuffing, but they often penalize sites by lowering its ranking when they detect it.
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 (because of 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 . . . if the search engines even let them find you in the first place.
5. Their eyes start to hurt when they read your 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 sentence 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 too 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’s import for the font size to be large enough for comfortable reading. You also want to have effective 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. They can’t find the information they want because your text isn’t 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 glance over the page and quickly find the information they’re after.
Scannable text uses different formatting features, including the use of:
- Headlines
- Sub-headers
- Bulleted lists
- Bold typeface
- Shorter paragraphs
- Whitespace
People read websites very differently than they read articles and books and, in part, online-blogs. When people visit a website, they are looking for specific information. They visually scan the site to find the information they want. A visitor probably won’t want to read everything on the page; just what is interesting to them.
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. Frustrate your reader and they will happily leave without the information they came for.
7. Their eyes spot a specific header, but they can’t find the information they are looking for.
Part of making a scannable website is the use of headers and sub-headers. 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 reader what information they will find in the following text, ignore what the header states or implies—follow it with a totally unrelated subject. This will frustrate and confuse your readers, perhaps enough for them to leave your site.
8. They wanted to follow a link, but the link was broken.
When a reader wants to learn more about something on your website, they will happily click on a link. The link is a sign that they will get to a page that contains lots of information they’re looking for.
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 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. Lose your credibility with a quick click. (Search engines hate broken links, as well.)
9. They 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 their time?
The most common reason for slow-loading websites is unoptimized images. Even one unoptimized image can severely increase page load time. Today in 2024, acceptable load time for websites is less than 3 seconds.
If you want to make your web visitor leave, ignore slow load time. In fact, they may not visit your site at all!
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 a full-time freelance content writer specializing in website content, articles, and blog posts. Previously, as owner of Laura Elton Marketing & Web Design, Laura developed websites using HTML, CSS, WordPress, and great content. Contact her at laura@lefreelancewriter.com or visit her at LinkedIn.