5 reasons why users are leaving your website

Do you ever wonder why users are leaving your website so soon after arriving? Is your bounce rate high and conversions dropping?

Here are 5 common reasons why your users might be leaving and how to solve them.

01. Outdated design

When it takes only 0.05 seconds for users to form an opinion about your website, it's vitally important to ensure this is a positive one.

Studies into first impressions have revealed that users initially pay more attention to the design of a website than it's content. Jeff Torczon, Founder and CEO of InfinityHR says "94% of users notice the look and feel of a website first" which really reinforces this point.

When users visit your website, they see it as a reflection of your business. So keeping it update with the latest design trends is extremely important. Websites that are out of date give out the wrong impressions, they allow for users to question a business and make negative assumptions.

It's important to regularly review your website and ensure it stays "current". It should always reflect the business.

02. Slow loading

Technology has transformed the way users live their lives. With a few taps on their mobile, they can easily have access to whatever they want. They can swipe away those websites that take to long to load. Users have become "digitally" impatient.

Research by Google, revealed "53% of users admit to abandoning websites that took longer than 3 seconds to load".

The most effective way to improve a website's loading speed is to ensure all of it's images are optimised for web and are compressed to their smallest file size. Another, is to implement lazy loading. Lazy loading only renders the images that users can see, deferring those that are not needed. This reduces the "weight" of a page making it load quicker.

03. Not being mobile friendly

The number of people browsing the internet via mobiles is at it's highest, and is still growing. As of May, 2022, "58% of all internet traffic comes from mobile devices", according to Oberlo. With "48% feeling annoyed or frustrated when websites are not mobile friendly", the need for responsive websites has never been greater.

As the name suggests, responsive websites are those that alter their layout and prioritise content to best fit the device its being viewed on. They make for a more enjoyable experience, as users are no longer required to zoom in and out to view content.

And if that's not enough, Google has been using mobile friendliness as a ranking tool since 2015. So if your website is not up to scratch, it will not only affect your ranking but also your users themselves.

04. Poorly defined CTA's

Every page of a website has a primary purpose; something it wants users to to do. However, sometimes its important to remind them what that actually is, in the form of call to actions (CTA's).

CTA's are prompts, in the form of buttons or hyperlinks, that encourage users to perform a task. An example could be a "contact us" or "buy now" button. The most effective CTA's are those that grab the users attention without being to intrusive. They should be simple and to the point.

It's considered good practice to only have one CTA per page and to use accent colours to ensure they don't get overlooked. Having multiple CTA's on a page will only confuse the user and distract them from completing their task.

05. Dense content

It's important to understand that users don't read webpages like they do with books, reading from top to bottom. They instead scan a webpage looking for meaningful headlines, highlighted keywords or images for reassurance. It's only when they are fully interested that they read word for word.

It's for this reason that we should make content more engaging and easier to consume. By breaking content down into more sizable chunks we make the experience more enjoyable. Avoid overwhelming users with large amounts of dense content and using needless jargon. Instead, write content that is straightforward and to the point. Imagery, sub-headings and bullet points will help improve the readability of a page.

Key takeaways

To be clear, there are many reasons why users leave websites after landing on them, but by making them users friendly, light-weight and visually appealing, we stand a better chance in keeping users engaged longer.