The Top 7 Reasons People Are Leaving Your Website Quickly

Do you ever land on a website and then immediately hit the back button or close the browser tab? You probably do it a lot more than you realize. I did it twice just this morning.

You do it because something about the site bothered you enough that you made the split second decision that whatever you came to see just wasn’t worth it.

Imagine if people were reacting that way to your website. What if they are?

If your Google Analytics show that people are landing on your site and consistently leaving after only a few seconds you likely have a problem.

Here are the top 7 reasons people are probably leaving your website too quick:

This one you really shouldn’t need any convincing on. Think about it. How long do you wait for a site to load before moving on? In an age where attention spans get shorter and shorter by the year you only have at MAX a few seconds to get someone on your website. If your site doesn’t load by then most people will move on.

I have no issue with websites making money. A lot of great blogs and websites depend on the revenue they generate from ads to keep the site operating. I run ads on this website.

Where ads become a problem is when they negatively impact the user experience. People should not have to click through 5 pop-ups and 3 overlay ads just to get to your content.

The worst offenders are the sites that trigger pop-ups that you can’t figure out how to close.

Rather than dealing with all that most people will just click off your site and find what they were looking for elsewhere.

The bottom line is that if you overdo it with ads you’re shooting yourself in the foot and will ultimately make less money because no one will stay on your site.

How does your website look and perform on mobile devices? The majority of your site visitors will be arriving via mobile device.

You need to make sure your site works well on smartphones and tablets. What that means is making sure users don’t have to pinch or zoom to see your content. It should automatically shrink to fit whatever device it’s being viewed on.

Ensuring that your site is easy to navigate is crucial if you want visitors to stick around and look at more of your content. Make your navigation as intuitive as possible so that users don’t have to look around to figure out where to click.

Having a search feature enabled is also a good idea so that it’s easy to search your site for something specific.

This is a fairly new one but extremely important. Google has started requiring sites to get what is called an SSL certificate that ensures all the communication between your browser and website is encrypted.

You’ll notice a lot of website urls that used to start with “http” now start with “https” with the “s” on the end meaning it’s secure. You can see it on this site.

If you don’t secure your site visitors who land on it will be treated to a big ugly warning from Google telling them your site isn’t secure. It’s likely to scare the hell out of your visitors and make them think they’re getting a virus from your site.

Leaving your site unsecured will also hurt your search rank, because Google gives a priority to secure sites.

A website is only as good as its content. If people don’t like the content you provide they’re not going to stay on your site for long.

How content should look:

Make sure you have well crafted headlines and easy to read text. Avoid big blocks of text because they look terrible on mobile devices. Break up big paragraphs into small, easily digestible paragraphs that are easy to skim.

You see this a lot now on news websites. Most people find it incredibly annoying. Especially, when you’re in a public place and you click a site and it starts blaring a video while the page is loading. It’s disruptive and unnecessary.

The bottom line is that if people are immediately clicking off your site there must be a reason. Figure out what your audience preferences are and what will make them engage more. Make sure you’re not doing some of the things on this list that could be driving people away.

You only have 2 or 3 seconds to make an impression on a new website visitor. Make sure it’s a good one!

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