5 Tips to Improve your Website’s Stickiness and Time-on-Site Number

Traffic doesn’t mean much if it doesn’t convert, and traffic doesn’t convert if someone is only on your site for a mere five seconds. Many companies put a lot of effort into the search engine optimization (SEO) of their website so that people surfing the web can find their website and click. However, once someone finds your website, the battle is not over. Even if you’ve also put a lot of time into designing a good-looking landing page, this doesn’t guarantee a high time-on-site figure. So what does? Content and the placement of that content.

Time-on-Site vs. Bounce Rate

Before working to improve your time-on-site, it’s important to understand how the term differs from bounce rate:

• Time-on-Site – This is the number of seconds or minutes that someone is looking around any webpage of your website. Even if they keep bouncing from one page to another, it will all count toward time on your site.
• Bounce Rate – This is the percent of visitors who come to your website and leave without navigating to any of your other webpages.

It isn’t always a bad thing when someone bounces from page to page; there are certain pages in many company websites where the company wants someone to bounce to another page. It is therefore up to the small business to determine which pages should have a low bounce rate and which pages should have a high bounce rate. It’s tough to just look at one large percentage for the entire site when dealing with bounce rate. Visit Kissmetrics to learn more about bounce rate.

Time-on-site will give you a good idea of the popularity of your website. The higher the time-on-site, the better chance you have for a high conversion rate.

There are a few different ways that a website can measure both time-on-site and bounce rate, but Google Analytics is probably the most popular. You can visit Google Analytics Help or Mashable to learn more about getting started with Google Analytics. 

How to Improve Time-On-Site

A good time-on-site number completely depends upon the type of content you offer and the type of website you run. For example, a website with a video is also more likely to have a higher time-on-site because videos are “stickier” than other forms of content.

In general, a time-on-site number of 3 to 8 minutes is actually considered good for a typical blog-type website. Estimate a little higher if your website is not centered around a blog, and estimate a little higher if your website is full of videos.

Here are a few of the ways you can improve your time-on-site number:

• Internal Linking– This is a great way to keep people navigating around your site. Whenever you write a piece of content, make sure you are linking to other content on your site that can offer relevant information. This allows people to easily click a link as opposed to going back to Google and typing in a new search.
• Videos –Videos are always an easier way to learn about a given topic, so consider creating a weekly video in addition to traditional content. Many websites put headlines on the landing page to generate a click. If this is the case, consider letting people know in the headline that the content is a video by placing [VIDEO] at the end of the headline.
• Related Articles – Take advantage of knowing what the reader is already interested in learning; many websites have a section at the bottom of content with a list of related articles. People usually scroll to the bottom of an article (many times without reading the article), so seeing articles that are more to their liking is a great way to keep readers engaged.
• Loading Time – If you put yourself into the position of the reader, you will be able to understand the importance of loading time. If going from one webpage to another is taking too long or if a video won’t load, people are going to click away. Help improve your loading times by deactivating unnecessary plugins and optimizing your code.
• Content –Google Analytics will allow you to see which webpages have the lowest time-on-site, so it’s important that you take the time to analyze these numbers. This will also help you determine what kind of content your visitors want to consume most.

Time-on-site is something that can truly improve your conversion rate. You want people spending a long time researching your company and then making the decision to buy. Great content is the best way to make sure that a visitor has all the information necessary to make that decision.

Have you found that analyzing your time-on-site number has improved your conversion rates? Let us know in the comments below.

Amanda DiSilvestro is a writer on topics ranging from social media to 401k services. She writes for an online resource that gives advice on topics including phone systems to small businesses and entrepreneurs for a lead generation website, Resource Nation.

Photo: Skwishy

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