Publishers, it goes without saying that understanding your customers, as well as their consumption habits is the key to making any commercial venture successful. However, more specifically, there is an array of factors that influence the behavior of customers on your site, some of which can be somewhat surprising. Addressing small details on your site can give you additional opportunities to keep customers from abandoning your site and, going further, keep them coming back for more. Ultimately, you want to boost the most important consumer-oriented aspects of your website in order to achieve two goals:
- to influence the customer’s decision to return to and engage with your well-thought-out site, and
- to convert and retain customers as a result a good strategic implementation of your website.
Website abandonment
Website abandonment can happen as a result of a few different factors. Most of these factors, however, are under your control, so always remember to address two key components of your site’s features: Photo quality and providing distinct calls to action. Here’s what to keep in mind about both:
- Using the best photo quality. Quantity and quality are absolutely vital when it comes to the way your content is presented in photos. Consider creating your own images, if you are unable to source high quality images from elsewhere. Also consider hiring a professional in the event that you don’t have the proper equipment to produce high-quality images. Findings have shown that companies that replaced their previous low-quality images, with high-quality ones, experienced a 22% boost in sales!
- Providing Distinct Calls to Action. Use buttons that stand out from the rest of the way your site is designed. Make sure each action is labeled with a statement that conveys what the user will do should he click on this option. For example, provide a good-sized button labeled, “Sign me up”, or even better “sign up”. Any call to action should include a verb to clearly express to the user what they will be doing.
Website crashed or was too slow
Site abandonment is an important element of pushing users down the sales funnel to lead them to conversion. Site abandonment is affected by landing pages, product pages, site navigation, site speed and other main elements of your site.
If your site abandonment rate is high, then you have a problem that needs to be addressed.
Many online publishers host their websites that run on poorly configured servers, and consequently, their site loads slowly and crashes. If this is an issue for you, change to a better-performing host. You’ll see that not only your site will load faster, but your search visibility could improve drastically, and most importantly, your sales might peak, as well.
What can be done to reduce website abandonment?
Site Navigation
Site navigation is a huge component of both site and cart abandonment. Site abandonment will consistently be higher on sites which are difficult to navigate, and confusing. Consider doing A/B testing with the use of Landing Page Optimization, and Visitor Behavior Optimization to decrease site abandonment if you notice it spiking. When aspects of the user experience on your website are addressed, you’ll notice changes in the analytics of your website’s performance. Users generally behave a certain way, according to how a website it structured, and the numbers are solid proof of this phenomenon.
Making yourself found
71% of the organic site traffic derives from Google. Understanding where your customers are coming from is key for you to optimize your site and decreasing your rate of site abandonment. If you are aware of where visitors are coming from, you can better navigate answering their questions, as well as provide them with relevant information. Consider using Google Analytics in order to determine how people are reaching your site. Keep in mind mobile traffic, and don’t forget to optimize your social media tactics, as these are vital to the life of your campaign and future conversion/retention rates.
Make it mobile
A majority of your customers will connect to your website through their mobile phones. Many of these phones will not have the ability to play Flash or handle heavy, complicated, interactive graphics. Instead of losing these potential customers, it’d be in your best interest to provide a way for them to at least get the most important bits of information, and if you can, make sure that the majority can surf through your entire website If website features a lot of Flash content, your ads might not be eligible to show on most of the smartphones on the market today. So, do what you have to do to make your content compatible technologically in order to prevent site abandonment.
While it can be challenging to keep track of what is infringing upon your ability to boost conversion, as long as you address the key components discussed in this article, you’ll have a broader idea as to what you need to focus on to increase your website and business’s success.
Do you have any tips to avoid website abandonment? If so, what are they? And what other tips might you recommend that weren’t mentioned?