How to get people to spend more time on your website

Written on the 2 December 2020

Getting your customers to stay on your site longer will help you build a relationship with them and get them to purchase from you again.

Most visitors don't spend more than a couple of minutes on your site, so they aren't exposed to your brand or your products for very long. However, if you can offer something to your visitors on your website that will keep them there, they will be in contact with your brand for a lot longer. This will, at the very least, put you at the top of their mind and could potentially increase your sales.

The key to getting visitors to stay longer on your site is to give them access to something valuable. This can include educational tools, detailed information on your products and past work and even entertainment. Some features you can add to your website to make it more interactive and informative are:

• Photo gallery: 
  A photo gallery is a great way to showcase your past work. More than 60% of consumers will research a product and company on the Internet before they make a purchase, so making your portfolio of work available to potential clients will give them an idea of what you can do for them, while also keeping them on your site for longer. 
   
• Blogs:
  Like forums, blogs allow visitors to interact with you, your business and other users, as well as providing interesting content to keep them on the site. Make your blog posts regular and entertaining and you will have site visitors staying on your site to read all the entries. 
   
• Product catalogue:
  Consumers use the Internet to research products before they purchase them, so having an online product catalogue on your site will give visitors a reason to stay on for longer. Use pictures and detailed descriptions to make it informative, and use cross-selling to keep them browsing for longer. 
   
• Articles:
  To keep your visitors on your site for longer than a few minutes, you need to give them something to do or to read that will keep their attention. Articles are a great tool for this, because they give you the opportunity to share your expertise with your prospects, while increasing the content on your website. 
   
• RSS feeds:
  Like articles, RSS feeds are a fast and simple way to get interesting and valuable content on your website. You can subscribe to the RSS feeds of other websites and have up-to-date list of the news and articles from their site. You need to think about what your target market wants, then get the RSS feeds of websites that contain this information. This is a great way to make your site the 'one stop shop' for your prospects to get information on a variety of topics. 

As well as getting people to spend more time on your site, these features have the added benefit of drawing these people back to your site on a regular basis. This is very important, because the more time people spend on your site, the more chances you have to convert them to customers.