Most people use the web to find the products and services they need. Back in 2012, 85% of consumers were using the internet to find local businesses. It’s safe to assume that an even higher percentage are searching for local establishments online.
It’s important to make a good first impression when new visitors land on your home page. Here are four ways to make visitors love your website.
1. Quick Speed, Responsive Design.
You have about seven seconds to grab a visitor’s attention. The longer it takes your website to load, the fewer seconds you’ll have catch a visitor’s interest.
If your website isn’t fully loaded in two to three seconds, visitors are more likely to click off your site and visit your competitor’s page.
Several things can slow down your site, including:
- Large images
- Advertisements
- Clunky software
Take steps to make your website faster. Your visitors – and search engines – will thank you.
In addition to speed, you also want to make sure that your site has a responsive design. A responsive website automatically adjusts to the visitor’s screen size. If someone visits your site from a smartphone, your website will display a mobile-friendly design.
2. Easy to Navigate.
Make it as easy as possible for visitors to navigate your website. Take a minimalistic approach to your main menu. There’s no need to link up every single page on your main menu. Add subpages to a drop-down menu for easy access without cluttering your page.
The website for All American Plumbers is a great example of how sub-navigation can keep your site’s design clean and simple. When you hover the “Services” section, a drop-down menu appears that links to pages for the company’s services, whether it’s about drain cleaning and hydro jetting. If they had added every page to the top-tier navigation, the website would be difficult to navigate and look cluttered.
Linking your pages in this way will also help search engines make sense of your website and what it’s about. Google and other search engines prefer sites with easy, organized, and simple navigation trees.
3. Be Clear.
When visitors land on your home page, what do they see? What message are you sending?
Greet new visitors with a clear mission and slogan, so they know exactly what you’re all about as soon as the page loads.
How can you tell if your message is clear? Check the bounce rates of your pages. If 80% of the traffic to a page is bouncing, that may be a sign that your message isn’t clear. Revisit these pages, and make some changes to your copy to see if your bounce rate improves.
4. Tell Them Where to Go.
Visitors are far more likely to stay on your website if you give them some direction. Do they know where or what to do next?
Every page should have calls-to-action that direct visitors to where they need to go.
Make sure that these calls-to-action stand out on the page, so visitors don’t overlook them.
