What do your site visitors do when they land on your home page? Do they peruse through the quality content, or simply click the back button?
The amount of time users spend on your site is a metric that gives you information about your readers. It allows you to continually improve your site’s content and design in order to keep visitors on your site longer.
By evaluating the on-site time of your visitors, you can take the critical steps to build your audience, optimize your website, and improve conversion rates.
On-Site Time
On-site time is a measure of the time between the initial visitor click to your site and the moment they return to the search engine. It’s a strong predictor of the performance of your website and a valuable metric to evaluate over time.
A higher on-site time indicates that users are satisfied with the results they receive, while qualifying your site’s ability to meet their search needs. It gives you insight into the amount of engagement visitors have with your content, along with the strength of individual pages.
On site time can also provide feedback on the performance of marketing campaigns that drive traffic to your site.
When visitors land on your website, they need information. A short amount of time spent on your site suggests that they didn’t find what they are looking for. As search engines strive to provide relevant results to their users, this has a significant impact on your overall rankings.
Getting Visitors to Stick Around
There are a number of ways to increase the time viewers spend on your site. By incorporating different approaches, you’ll establish a comprehensive strategy that maximizes long-term improvements of your metrics.
Making your website easy to navigate increases on-site time scores. One of the major flaws of most websites is the lack of clarity they provide readers. Including links to other pages reduces the friction that occurs when visitors are confused upon entering your site.
This can be done by anticipating what a user will want to see next. Once you’ve established your site’s core message, direct them to your services, about page, or related content easily to keep them engaged longer.
Improving the quality of your content is equally important. Evaluating analytics will inform you on the specific content that results in lower time on site scores. This helps you target your efforts and improve on weaknesses that may be losing visitors before they make it to more engaging content.
Incorporate links to your social media presence, free products, newsletters, or other special offers to get readers to return to your site. Over time, this can help increase the amount of time they spend engaging with your content, and make it easy to reconnect to you in other ways.
Understanding Your Visitors
Perhaps the most significant benefit of measuring on-site time is the information it provides regarding your readers. By optimizing your website to increase on-site time, you gain a deeper understanding into what your visitors are looking for.
You can identify which pages keep them around longer, and tailor your site to meet their needs in a more targeted and specific way.
But don’t be afraid to move beyond your analytics and communicate directly with your visitors. By asking the right questions, you’ll have the vital feedback needed to know whether your site is meeting your clients’ (and therefore your own) needs.
Addressing on-site time issues from different angles will give you the most return on your efforts. By evaluating and understanding your readers’ behaviors through the amount of time they spend on your site’s content, you’ll be on your way to building your audience quickly for long-term success.
What have your experiences been with user on-site time? Have you seen improvements?
Let us know in the comments below.
