How to keep visitors longer on your website?

First of all I would like to ask a question: Why would actually webmasters want to keep visitors longer on their websites? I think there can be many different answers based on blog owner’s intentions. If somebody runs blog to make money, the main intention to keep visitors on the website for longer time would probably be the higher chance to receive more clicks on ads.

If the person runs online business the answer is probably different: He would like to keep visitors longer online to persuade them to buy something. Many visitors leave very fast, but if they stay longer the probability they will purchase is higher. Therefore one of the prime concerns of every online business seller should be increasing of the time visitors spend on the website.

In this article I am not going to tell you 10-20 “guarantee” ways, how to keep your visitors online longer, because I personally did not try that many methods. Instead of that I will give you few techniques I have tried and which I believe can make the difference.

1. Keep your website clean and easy to navigate
The first impression is the most important. If visitors don’t like your website they will probably leave immediately. So make your website attractive. People like clean, simple but well designed websites. For example: white is a great background color I think, supplement it with other catchy color, add nice original and professional looking logo and you are on your way to impress.
Put your navigation bar at the top of your website, visitors will notice it immediately after they arrive. So it will be easy for them to navigate through your website.
No aggressive glary colors, no big pictures, no flashing ads on the front page are allowed (quality pictures of your products in appropriate sizes are of course fine).

2. Add related articles at the end of each post
If you get the attention of visitors and they will read your article, they are probably interested in your topic, so give them option to learn more about it. Placing links to related articles is a great way how to encourage visitors to read more and stay longer on your website. Through the articles you can show your good knowledge of the topic and your professionalism. People are more tend to buy when they believe you are the expert in the area. But your articles have to be good quality, otherwise you will make bad impression and people will probably leave very soon.

3. Enable links to open in new tabs
There might be a lot of reason why to place links to external websites in your articles. But the problem is, if visitors click these links they will be redirected to the external websites. Placing a short html code into external links can solve this problem because it allows opening these links in new browser tab. So you will not lose visitors.

Here is a simple guide how to add this code into links: (for Blogspot blogs)

• When you are writing an article you can choose between 2 options: Edit Html or Reach text. Choose Edit Html option.


• Inserted link in Edit Html option will look like this:



• To open this link in new browser tab you have to add following html code into link:



The new link will look like this:



Note: You can add also title to this link. If you look at the added part of html code there is title=" ". You can put the title between quotation marks. As a result when visitors place mouse over the link this title will appears.

4. Encourage visitors to subscribe to your website
Another great way how to keep visitors on your website is through their subscription. To encourage readers to subscribe to your website offer them freebies or allow them to download your e-book if they subscribe. Don't forget to place the subscribe button at the top of your website, so it will be noticeable easily.
You can contact your subscribers later with special offers and they might come back to you. But be careful don’t spam, you will loose your reputation of honest seller. One or two mails in a month are enough.