To increase your number of page views per visitor, try these five methods. Why are you wasting time and effort attracting people to your website only to have them depart after seeing the first or second page? It is significantly less expensive to redirect an existing visitor to another page on your site than to attract a new visitor to that page. What’s more, guess what? It’s also more valuable. If visitors browse multiple pages on your site, they likely enjoy what they see. Each article or page they read will improve brand familiarity and trust, resulting in future conversions. Wouldn’t you be fascinated if I told you that you could double, treble, or even quadruple the average number of pages read by a visitor? Finally, a little effort may provide excellent benefits if you haven’t spent much time enhancing your user experience (UX).
The fact that UX optimization seems complicated keeps website owners from doing it. It’s something you may believe only coders are aware of. In actuality, it’s relatively easy and doesn’t need any specific understanding. Sure, gaining expertise will help you see benefits sooner in the future, but anybody can begin enhancing their visitors’ UX now. First and foremost, what is user experience? It’s a broad word that might lead to misunderstanding. The user experience comprises all aspects of how the information on your website influences a visitor’s visit. The Morville honeycomb captures it best:
A good user experience has seven unique components:
- Useful – your material must have a purpose.
- Practical – material should be helpful, and tools should function well.
- Users must desire what you’re delivering for it to be desirable.
- Findable — not only should your original material be findable, but so should all of your other stuff (good navigation).
- Visitors will not have a positive experience if they can’t access your content (pop-ups, overlays, slow loading, etc.).
- Credible – A user can only have a good time if they believe what they’re reading or utilizing.
- Valuable – your website must provide something of value to visitors (essentially a valid extension).
The five approaches to improve user experience I will show you how you fit into one of these seven groups. One other thing to keep in mind is that each user experience is different. When two sites make identical modifications, the UX improves while the UX on the other deteriorates. It is dependent on the number of people that visit your website. That implies that even if you agree with what I show you in this piece, you should test it on your website to see whether it will make a big difference. The user experience (UX) is not a personal preference. It should be backed up with real-world evidence.
Practical strategies to increase your page visits:
1. Links aren’t simply good for SEO; they’re also suitable for users.
Too frequently, site owners make modifications and marketing choices based on their assumptions about how search engines would respond. This is something I’ve done in the past. Almost everyone has experienced it. It shouldn’t be simply because you read that Google encourages content that connects to authoritative sites that you include a link in your post. It should be because it provides value to your visitor’s experience. Have you noticed how many times I link to Quick Sprout and NeilPatel.com in my posts?
Of course, it varies by subject, but I usually include at least 20 links in each article. This equates to at least one link for every 200 words, if not more.
Why are links beneficial to user experience?
- Links may provide answers to queries; if it’s a prevalent one, you might write a paragraph about it. However, if you believe that just a tiny percentage of your readers would inquire, you might offer a link specifically for them.
- Links logically direct readers to the next step: you must choose a scope (what you’ll cover) while writing anything. Even if there is an intriguing connected subject, you may not have enough room to address it. Instead, a link might lead the reader to another article, allowing them to continue researching the subject.
- Remember those seven UX factors? Links help to develop trust. One of them was trustworthiness. In a data-driven piece, including links to sources and resources gives readers greater confidence in the information you’re delivering.
You can allow people to tailor their own experience if you offer the correct links, which is always a good thing. There’s one more thing I’d like to bring up. Should you add internal or external links: I’ll keep it as straightforward as possible. Whether it’s on your site or someone else’s, always link to the most helpful resource for your viewers. Because the viewer is already aware of your work and likes it enough to read the current post, previous pieces on your site frequently contain the most outstanding value if they are highly relevant. Internal links increase the number of pages a visitor will view on your site. A new site won’t have much material pertinent to link to, but an established site (like Quick Sprout) will have a ton of related stuff related to each article. As I previously said, external links may make you look more trustworthy to search engines. That’s just a slight advantage. The true gift is that if you link to an excellent site, your visitor will connect you with it (you just did them a favor). This results in increased reader loyalty and trust. This is why linking to the first site you locate on Google may not be the most effective approach. To discover something precious, dig a little deeper. Finally, keep in mind that each link will be clicked just a few times (usually 1-10 percent ). However, all of those connections add up. If you add ten more internal links to content, you’ll likely receive an extra 10-20% page views on average. That’s a significant distinction. Imagine increasing your monthly page visits from 10,000 to 11,000 or 12,000 simply by making one easy modification.
2. You have turtles among your guests.
My lengthy blogs (about 5,000 words) usually include many photographs. I use photos for several purposes, the most important of which is to break up the information and make it more readable. Because most of my blog readers use a desktop/laptop, I’m only able to accomplish this. Consider this: who has time to read 5,000 words on a smartphone screen? I bring this up since mobile and desktop surfing vary in terms of screen size and periods of speed. In less than a second, most computer users can download a few hundred kilobytes or even a few megabytes. Mobile phones, on the other hand, are a different story. According to a study, mobile connection speeds vary from 0.6 to 9.5 Mbps. Some mobile visitors will undoubtedly be able to load your site rapidly, but the majority will not. Most smartphone users realize that accessing the Internet would be slower than usual, although not by as much as you may assume. According to reports, consumers anticipate a web page to load in less than two seconds. Those, though, are desktop users. Users using smartphones expect sites to load in under four seconds, so there’s a bit more wiggle room. On mobile, however, the average site takes 9 seconds to load, which is much too long. The fundamental issue here is that a slow-loading website isn’t simply inconvenient; it also turns people away from your content. If your site takes longer than 3 seconds to load, 40% of visitors will abandon it (on desktops). You may extend this to 6 seconds for mobile users, which is slower than the average mobile site performance.
The issue with page speed testing is that many website owners have previously tested their sites for performance and seen no problems. Unfortunately, the average page speed tester has a problem. By default, almost all prominent page load speed tests (such as GTmetrix and Pingdom) utilize an unthrottled connection. This removes connection speed from the equation and focuses entirely on the technical aspects. That’s significant. That’s how you’ll know if you’re experiencing any severe speed concerns. The difficulty is that the page load time you obtain from such testing reflects just a small portion of your customers (even if it’s a sizable portion).
Consider the following: I used GTmetrix to test Quick Sprout using the default parameters. It passed with flying colors and had a loading time of 1.5 seconds—pretty incredible.
You may also register a free account and then modify your connection speed to 3G, which most mobile users still use (57 percent of users).
I get a completely different loading time when I put Quick Sprout through the test again: 3.3 seconds.
In this situation, the time it took for my page to load was more than quadrupled, and this was on an elementary page. When you do this test on different sites, the load times sometimes more than double, this implies that barely reaching the initial time restriction of two seconds isn’t enough. I won’t detail page performance optimization here, but I will discuss the most effective strategies to make your site mobile-friendly. The amount of HTTP requests made is one of the essential metrics that any page speed tester will provide you. An HTTP request is issued to acquire the information for each script, picture, CSS file, and another element in the HTML. It takes time to process each request. When loading a website, HTTP requests take up around 78 percent of the time. Reduce the number of HTTP queries that a browser has to perform to speed up your site.
How do you go about doing this?
Consolidating CSS files and pictures as much as possible is the simplest method. It’s pretty unusual for a WordPress theme that hasn’t been optimized to have three or more CSS files requested on the same page. Copy all CSS files into a single file and remove any references to the files that have since been destroyed. Most sites may also use CSS sprites to reduce the number of requests they make. Sprites are image files with many pictures included inside them. The CSS code informs the browser where to find each picture. All images that are called on every page, such as navigation images or logos, should be sprites. Use a program like Spritepad to make this simple. Drag & drop your photographs onto the given canvas. The location-specific CSS will be generated automatically.
After you’ve included all of your stock photos, you can save your CSS sprite (at the top) and use it instead of several different images on your sites. The two methods listed above are easy solutions to eliminate multiple HTTP requests on most websites, but there’s more to it. For further details, here’s a little more detailed guide.
Page size: The size of the page in bytes is the other primary parameter assessed with a speed tool. Your page should be no more than a few hundred kilobytes in size (but this isn’t always possible). If your page performance is slowing down, you may need to minimize the number of pictures you use, but there are a few things you can do first. To begin, reduce the size of your photographs. The information associated with most picture files is primarily worthless and takes up a lot of space. To minimize file size, use a program like Optimizilla or a WordPress plugin like WP Smush. Second, while transferring files, employ HTTP compression to reduce their size. GZIP is the most prevalent kind of HTTP compression. Check the GZIP option in the W3 Total Cache plugin to utilize GZIP compression in WordPress.
Finally, make your website as simple as feasible. Don’t clutter your header with an extensive sidebar or a slew of photos. As much as possible, stick to plain text and HTML.
Hosting and delivery: Even if you do everything else correctly and your hosting and delivery are wrong, your visitors may not be able to load your pages quickly. The hosting component is straightforward. First, your site will never be fast if you’re paying $5 per month for a shared plan. Unless you’re just starting, you should invest in a dedicated hosting server for your website. Second, I propose employing a content delivery network (CDN) for static assets like pictures. This will cost you more, but it is worth it since your website will expand quicker, and visitors will convert better. A guide on selecting a decent CDN may be found here.
Bonus Tip: Increase the relevancy of your content to make your consumers feel more satisfied: When tenants in a building complained about unusually lengthy elevator wait times, rather than speeding up the elevators, the building owners provided the occupants something to do while they waited. The complaints ended once the building management added mirrors so that occupants could gaze at themselves while waiting.
While not an exact example, waiting for a website to load may be as annoying and dull as waiting for an elevator. Visitors are aware that they are trading their time in exchange for information. They will tolerate waiting for less if they appreciate your material. I believe that many of my readers, including you, would be willing to wait longer than 2 seconds for a new blog article to load. “If visitors can’t locate what they’re looking for on a website, they’ll think the download time is longer than it is.”
In contrast, if consumers locate what they want quickly and readily on a website, they perceive the download time to be quicker than it is. For over ten years, I’ve repeatedly noticed these impressions throughout usability testing.” Shari Thurow is a writer who lives in New York City.
So, what does this imply for you and your website?
It implies that having a table of contents to assist your visitors in finding the answers they’re searching for, creating a highly relevant meta description, and highlighting crucial portions of your article might make your readers feel like waiting for the page to load was worthwhile. A satisfied reader is considerably more likely than a disappointed reader to click on further links to your site’s postings.
3. Your message must come first, so keep distractions to a minimum.
Whether on a landing page or blog post, your message must be prominent. It’s what your visitors expect to see when they come to your website. This comes under several UX aspects, the most important of which is accessibility. Readers will continue to read if you make material readily available. On the other hand, if you make it challenging, many people will abandon your site or refuse to view another page. Even though site designs differ, most places have three primary sources of distraction that should be addressed.
Here’s how to get rid of them.
The sidebar is a neglected part on most sites.
- Tactic 1: Minimize or delete it. You should think carefully about what you put on your sidebar and if you need one. Medium is one of the most popular blogging platforms, with a reputation for being very readable. A Medium post has no sidebar, only content:
The no-sidebar layout eliminates any distractions, allowing the reader to concentrate exclusively on the content. Others that have used this style have seen a 26-71 percent boost in page visits and conversion rates. This is a beautiful thing, but you may want to display your reader’s particular aspects of your site each time they visit it, even if it does divert them.
If you must utilize a sidebar, make it only include the most critical information, such as:
- opt-in
- bio
- top-level posts links
- products/services links
That’s precisely what I do with my blogs:
I don’t have anything spectacular on my sidebar, as you can see. But, of course, readers are aware that it exists, but if they aren’t interested in the sidebar information, they may concentrate on the substance of the piece.
- Tactic 2: Consider removing scrolling elements: This is a difficult question. Conversion rates may be improved by having fixed aspects of your website scroll down as the user scrolls down. However, if you go too far, it will have a detrimental impact on the user experience. Any scrolling element you add should be thoroughly tested. To assess whether it’s worth it, compare the before and after numbers for time on page and pages per visitor. I utilize scrolling elements sometimes, but not often. For example, on NeilPatel.com, notice how the top menu moves down with the page:
It’s worth noting that the items in both situations aren’t very intrusive and only take up a tiny portion of the screen. However, when you add a scrolling header, footer, social sharing buttons, or a sidebar, it may quickly become cluttered. Even if the information is excellent, a page like this will put off many readers:
Delay or eliminate pop-ups as a third tactic: Pop-ups, another touchy issue, may help you increase your email opt-in conversion rate. However, they irritate users, resulting in fewer pages per visitor. Be sure they don’t harm your user experience if you’re utilizing pop-ups. Don’t have them appear as soon as the page loads since this is a specific method to turn off visitors. Instead, wait at least 10 seconds—ideally, 60 seconds. The longer you wait before displaying your pop-up, the less irritating it will become. Asking a reader to shut a simple box after they’ve been reading for 30 seconds to a minute isn’t unreasonable.
4. Consistency takes precedence over originality.
Your brand must be consistent with being reputable. Your layout and content must be compatible to be helpful. When visitors come back to your site at least a few times, they should know what to anticipate. They should locate blog postings if they desire to do so quickly. Same thing if they wish to recruit you: getting in contact with you should be simple. There are two significant elements to consider regarding consistency and user experience.
- Factor 1: Branding and symbols- Your brand is formed by various factors, the most important of which are your logo and characters. I’m referring to something like Google’s hamburger menu when I say characters:
This icon denotes a menu containing options that may be found in various Google products, including Chrome and almost all Android apps. When a Google user wants to change anything, they go to the hamburger menu. Whatever your product is, you should use the same symbols and terminology in all of your communications, including your blog, landing sites, emails, and the actual product. Consider what would happen if you moved from the Quick Sprout blog to a different logo and color style landing page. You’d get the impression that something isn’t quite right, and you’d probably shut the tab—credibility squandered. All of your blog entries and website material should seem to be cohesive. Finally, utilize icons and symbols pertinent to their role to make it further apparent to your readers.
Icons may be used independently or as part of an image or link. You might, for example, place a magnifying glass in the sidebar if you’re connecting to a product like Quick Sprout. Alternatively, if your blog snippets contain the phrase “read more,” as many do, you may place an arrow right after it to indicate that there is more to come.
- Factor 2: Style- Style encompasses a color scheme and much more. It would be best if you also considered font kind, font size, layout, writing tone, and so on. Bernadette Jiwa, a copywriter, excels in maintaining a consistent style. She uses the same formatting for her postings as she does for her emails (see below):
The colored links, text size, and font are all the same in all of the emails:
Consistency gives your readers a sense of what to anticipate, enhancing their UX, regardless of platform. For example, if you’re on my email list for any of my blogs, you’ve probably noticed something about my emails: they’re all the same layout.
In the first line, there’s a link with the anchor phrase “the most recent (site) post.” Following that, there’s a solo link to the post with the title as the anchor text. Finally, I offer you a brief overview of the piece, as well as another invitation to read it. After a few emails, you’ll see a trend and know what to anticipate. This is beneficial to both you and me. It’s helpful to you since you’ll know precisely what to expect and how to get the information if you want it. It’s excellent for me since I know (stick with me) that any of those links will take you to the new post. What if I included the first link in some emails and only the final link in others? You’d have no idea what to anticipate. While most readers would still notice the link, some might scroll straight past the first one at the top or miss the final one at the bottom.
5. Emphasize critical points.
No, I’m not only talking about increasing the number of opt-ins. I’m referring to visibility when I say “big.” Readers must quickly identify the most significant elements of text for it to be as helpful as feasible. Here’s what I’m talking about: on every page with a strong UX, there will always be a focus point:
It’s an email opt-in box in this situation. The opt-in box has been highlighted with color and size despite the wide image and menu choices.
Here’s another illustration:
Unbounce’s sign-up buttons were prominently displayed. Both of these instances demonstrate the significance of contrast. Give something a dramatically different color than the rest of your web page to make it stand out—it will attract attention. However, increasing visibility is vital for more than simply email sign-ups and account registration. Consider including links in your text. These should be very visible and clickable (use). Some websites make their links grey or don’t emphasize them because visitors will click on them and never return. Your readers will always come back if your material is fantastic, as you and I both know. There are also the additional advantages mentioned in the first portion of this text. For example, links are shown as a bright and very apparent orange font on NeilPatel.com. In addition, I employ a huge font size. Links are visible and clickable even on mobile devices:
Given that many of these links connect to other pages on the site, visitors’ interest in them is positive, so why wouldn’t you want to showcase them? Again, my orange links are an example of contrast, but this time for a different reason. You may also emphasize aspects to make them stand out. For example, separate them from other items (add extra white space), use a different font, or use bold or italic effects to achieve this. Backlinko’s Brian Dean, for example, highlights his content updates with a distinctive yellow box. He also bolds the first few words to emphasize them:
A fundamental aspect of usability is rapidly recognizing what a user is searching for. I propose attracting some new users to your site and using software such as Crazy Egg to watch their mouse movements. You can observe what naturally sticks out to your viewers when they visit a page by looking at where the majority of their attention goes. Then you may tweak your components and compare the results until you get the desired effect, such as guiding people to an opt-in form, a link, or particular content.
Conclusion
You owe yourself to spend more time enhancing the user experience after all the work you spent developing traffic. If you use at least a couple of the ideas in this article, you should be able to increase your page views significantly. If you presently have 10,000 monthly pageviews, do you believe it’s simpler to obtain an additional 3,000 visitors or boost the average user’s page views by 30%? In most circumstances, the second alternative is much more convenient. Keep in mind, though, that UX optimization is not a quick fix. Remember to split test any adjustments you make and make incremental improvements until you’re providing your visitor with precisely what they want. As your company expands, I encourage you to think about, test, and improve the UX of your website.