Do you want to increase the return rate of website visitors? Very likely, over 75% of visitors will not return. This means you need to keep acquiring new visitors, which will increase your advertising cost or efforts to drive more traffic.
Also, it’s hard to get a person to take action in the first instance, so your conversion rate will be lower if you have no returning visitors.
If you want to increase the return rate of website visitors, you need to understand the reasons behind. The most common reason is that your blog has poor user experience such as slow page load times, mobile responsiveness issues and other issues.
Or you have no way to contact people who visited your website and follow up.
In this article, I’ll tell you how to fix these problems so that you will have more people coming back to your website.
5 Ways to Improve User Experience
1. Improve Page Load Speed
People lack patience nowadays. If your website takes too long to load, people will close the browser immediately.
Here are the ways to improve the site speed:
First, use a reliable web host. Your web hosting provider is the most critical factor that affects your site speed. Never host your website on some cheap shared hosting plans. Personally, I recommend using WPX Hosting, which is super fast, reliable and affordable. It’s one of the best Managed WordPress Hosting companies that you can trust and rely on.
Second, use a cache plugin. I highly recommend using WP Rocket, which is easy to configure and has a lot of features for speeding up your site.
Third, use a lightweight theme. Your theme is the foundation of your website, so it can have a huge impact on your site speed. I highly recommend using GeneratePress theme, which I use for building this site.
Finally, Optimise your image. Images occupy a lot of space on your website and it generally takes a bit longer for loading. I recommend using ShortPixel to compress your images after uploading to WordPress.
There are many other ways to optimise your site speed, but the above have the biggest impact that you should implement right away.
After taking the above actions, use GTmetrix, Pingdom or PageSpeed Insights to test the loading time. If it takes more than 2-3 seconds to load, you should take further steps to speed up your website.
If you want to hire an expert to help you out, you can go to OnlineJobs.ph where you can find great developers at a cheap price.
2. Have a Clean Layout
Does your website have a clean layout? Every element or widget on your website should serve a purpose. It should benefit your visitor and help them reach their goals. Having a lot of unnecessary elements will confuse and distract your visitors. As a result, they will leave very quickly.
Many websites have poor planning regarding the layout such as the sidebar. Take a look at your sidebar and ask yourself: is there anything on the sidebar that can benefit your reader? If the answer is no, remove it and your reader will feel more comfortable navigating your website.
Here are some elements that I don’t recommend including on the sidebar:
- Tag clouds
- Social media widgets
- Advertisements
These elements are very distracting and it’s better to remove them for a cleaner appearance.
3. Browsing Your Website on Mobile Phone
Almost everyone has a smartphone nowadays, so you should expect most traffic coming from mobile devices.
Therefore, you should make sure your website looks good on mobile devices. Using a mobile responsive theme is the first and foremost thing you should do. I highly recommend using GeneratePress for your WordPress site, which is the best theme in my opinion.
Moreover, while most themes are mobile responsive, it doesn’t guarantee it will look nice on mobile. So every time you make changes to your website, make sure you check it again on mobile devices as well.
4. Improve the Readability of Your Content
A large paragraph of text will put your visitors off reading it. Formatting is very important for readability.
Here’re some tips for you to improve the readability of your content:
- Write shorter paragraphs: Shorter paragraphs are easier to read. It can improve engagement.
- Use subheadings: Subheading allows readers to understand the content better and faster. Most people like scanning through the content.
- Use bullet points: Break up the text into bullet points can make readers feel more comfortable reading.
- Use images: Images can replace hundreds of words. Insert proper images into the content can also break up and reduce the length of your content.
- Use consistent typography: do not use some fancy fonts. Legibility is the most important. Use fonts like Arial, Sans Serif, Times New Roman are good enough. If you use GeneratePress Pro, you can customise the fonts easily in the visual customiser.
5. Your Headlines Should Match Your Content
There are lots of click bait which try to use misleading headlines to attract people to click but do not deliver the promise.
It’s annoying as readers may feel cheated and leave without returning. First impressions are very important. if you cheat a visitor, you will lose credibility. There is no way to promote anything with this kind of dishonest tactic.
Therefore, make sure your content backs up the promise made in the headlines. Headlines are used to set the expectations. The content is to live up to that expectation. By meeting the reader’s expectation with quality and relevant content, your readers will be more likely to share your content with their friends.
Ways to Get Your Readers Coming Back
1. Build an Email List
Building an email list is the most straightforward way to get your visitors coming back to your website from time to time.
Whenever anyone visits your website, you should try the best to capture their contact email. Email is still one of the best marketing channels with high return on investment.
Having 1000 email subscribers is more valuable than having 1000 followers on social media accounts. Social platforms can become unpopular one day and the algorithm changes all the time. Email is different. It’s like a phone number where you can contact a person and have an on-on-one conversation.
To capture emails, the best WordPress plugin is Thrive Leads. It has all the amazing features you need to create opt-in forms and embed it beautifully on your website.
To get people to subscribe for your email list, creating a valuable lead magnet is the most effective way by far. Remember, always offer value before asking for something from a person.
To increase the conversion rate for more subscribers, you can also create a beautiful landing page for a lead magnet. You can do so by using the best page builder, Elementor, which allows you to create any landing pages you like.
2. Use Browser-based push notifications
Do you know browser-based push notifications?
When your visitor clicks the allow button, you can send them updates which will appear within the browser.
You will be amazed by how high the click through rate is. There are a number of push notification platforms you can use. But if you are using WordPress, the easiest way is to install a plugin called PushEngage. You can then re-engage with your visitors with targeted push notifications. For example, when you have a new post, it will auto-update your visitors and attract them to visit your webpage.
3. Ask Email Subscribers to Follow Your Social Media Profiles
Having a person’s email is not enough. After all, you cannot send too many emails to a person, otherwise they may unsubscribe or mark it as spam.
Therefore, you should encourage your email subscribers to follow your social media accounts so that you can reach out to them there.
You can include the invitation to follow in the first welcome email.
4. Create an Online Community for Your Website
You should not underestimate the power of an online community. Many online marketers have a Facebook group for their audience. It can help connect with your audience better and drive more traffic to your website.
There is no better way to interact with your audience in a community like Facebook group.The beauty of using a Facebook group is that it is free. All the technical issues are handled by Facebook.
The only downside of this is that there might be a lot of distractions on Facebook. So the effect of marketing may be diluted.
If you want to create your own community, it’s possible to do so with WordPress. You can install the BuddyPress plugin, which allows you to set up a forum on your website. However, you should get prepared for a lot of technical issues.
Conclusion
You have now learnt a number of ways to increase the return rate of visitors and attract them back to your website. There are many other ways, but the tactics mentioned above should be the easiest to implement.
By implementing the tactics above, you should see a rise in traffic and revenue for your website. If you have other ideas to increase the return rate of visitors, feel free to comment below and let’s discuss.