Have you ever watched a DVD, and been forced to sit through ten minutes of unskippable adverts and messages telling you not to pirate the DVD that you just bought?
TV isn’t quite as bad, because you hold the remote, and there are other channels. They worry about losing you.
But on the Internet? There’s bajillions of other places to be, all just a couple of clicks away.
You have almost no control over your visitors whatsoever. You have to do everything you can to convince them to stay, and websites that don’t lose out to those which do.
For some reason, a lot of people design their website like this isn’t the case. They think people will carefully digest every part of their beautiful website, watch every slideshow and enjoy every video. In reality, they’re changing the channel endlessly – jumping from page to page in search of something they want. And the minute they think they won’t find it at your site, they’ll leave.
Here are some things you can do to keep them around.
1. Make sure visitors know what your website does instantly
Your visitors should figure out what your website does in about 3 seconds. They should be able to do this especially if they’ve never heard of your company (odds are, they haven’t), aren’t particularly web savvy and there’s a symphony of screaming kids and music in the background.
A good logo and tagline is your quickest win here. Don’t try to explain what you do in two paragraphs of text, because no one will stop to read them. You have one clear sentence, absolute maximum, your design and imagery. Use them wisely.
2. Respect your visitor’s time
The reason DVDs have unskippable intros is because no-one who designs them can get penalised. Imagine a world where you could push a button on your remote, and send a small electric jolt back to the person responsible? Hollywood would be a smoking wasteland in hours.
Your website visitors can’t send you electric shocks (yet) but they’re equally merciless when it comes to having their time wasted. They’ll just leave.
- If you have forms, keep them brutally short (more will get filled in).
- Avoid unnecessary words.
- Never ever force your visitors to sit through anything: a video, animation. They should request them, not have to skip them.
3. Give your visitors a reason to stay
Imagine your website is a party. All your friends have arrived. Is now a good time to start a 3 hour PowerPoint presentation on your favourite flora and fauna?
Your visitors have their own interests in their mind. They want to get something from your website. You need to work out how to get your message across in a way that doesn’t turn your visitors pale, or they’ll leave.
Ask yourself: if you were your visitors – would you stay at this party?
4. Make your goals easy
You can’t control your visitors. But you can make the path you want them to take extraordinarily easy. Define your goals explicitly – “fill in the contact form”, “place an order” – and try to satisfy them yourself. Ideally, run a usability test. Measure the success of your goals, and optimise every step of them relentlessly.
