How to increase average website session duration
When they are competing with other sites, owners of Drupal sites need to know not only how to attract the visitors, but also how to keep their attention. Here we present 12 possible methods to increase average visit duration.
12 methods to increase average website session duration
1. Interesting content
Admit it - you read most text very quickly. Interesting articles written by experts and containing useful information, however, will make visitors on your site read the material carefully. The size of a text is not as important as its subject and the depth of analysis. A corporate blog is an ideal location for fascinating and useful articles.
2. Landing
An ideal landing page is the one that fully answers the visitor’s questions. Therefore, when directing traffic to your site, you need to design the landing page carefully. Make sure that the SERP (search engine result page) shows the most essential information.
3. Load speed
A slow site is a test of patience for users, and one that most will fail. Usually, a browser tab that doesn’t load in 3 seconds is closed. Therefore, make sure that your pages load as fast as possible. From our article "The loading speed of a site — analysis and optimization tips", you can learn how to accelerate your pages load speed.
4. Site navigation
You can retain users attention by means of clear navigation and thoughtful use of links. This will provoke users and guests to go from one page of your site to another, which directly influences the time they stay on your page. The menu and relevant links are very powerful instruments for holding the attention of visitors on one web site.
5. Chat
If the purpose of your site is to sell a product or to render some service, organize online consultations. The user's dialog with the operator takes a certain amount of time. However, an efficient response is very important; otherwise such consultant will cause only annoyance.
6. Removing annoyances
Popup windows, clickunders and popunders, spontaneous sound notifications, banners and animations makes staying on a site extremely uncomfortable. Such distractions make visitors want to close your webpage it as fast as possible. Fewer annoyances equals a longer visit.
7. Readable font
Dark background, low-contrast font and excessively small-sized font size (less than 10px) are hard for readers to perceive. They do not contribute to longer site visit duration. Correct them immediately!
8. Audio and video content
Upload useful videos, presentations or podcast to your web project. Watching them, visitors will spend quite a long time on your site.
9. Layout
Make sure that your site displays correctly on mobile devices and in the latest versions of popular browsers. Cross-browser adaptive layout has huge SEO potential.
10. Callbacks
Communication with clients can significantly increase duration index. Inquiries and tests, responses and comments, calculators and online services do this perfectly. Make sure that there are interactive forms on your site.
11. Content placement
Having come to the site, the guests should be able to orient quickly to the new information. They should not "sink" in text sheets, but "clings" to certain graphic anchors. These may be titles, bold highlighting, pictures, diagrams, or photos. Without them, even informative and useful content will not attract visitors’ interest.
12. Reduction of off-target traffic
Foreign visitors, guests with different interests from those of your target audience, and representatives of other social and demographic categories will leave very quickly if they accidentally find themselves on your site. It is helpful to exclude this category from the general traffic, so that the index of average site visit duration noticeably increases.
By improving site visit length you improve behavioral factors that are very important for positional growth. In order to make users like your site, raise its usability, give it a convenient web site structure, and post up-to-date and interesting information. Besides, having increased your visit length on site, you automatically increase its conversion rate. This means more sales of your goods or services to customers!