The world is filled with noise, and we are bombarded by content now more than ever.

How long does it take before you are looking at a device in the morning? Do you pick up your phone and immediately check email, the weather, the news?

Most of us do. It starts mere seconds after our eyes fling open and lasts all day. The last thing we do before we go to sleep is look at a device.

As business owners, we are competing for our client’s attention with social media, news outlets, advertisers, television, other businesses, direct messaging, email, texts etc. All this content has clients tied up and distracted.

Even if people do find your website, how do you convert them? Statistics show that website visitors “bounce” from your site after only visiting one page for a few seconds. 

We see business owners making mistakes that drive traffic away from their site as fast as their advertising dollars are driving traffic to it. All the SEO in the world will not convert visitors into customers if they don’t stay on your site long.

Bottom line, you have about 30 seconds to get and keep a website visitor’s attention. How do you stand out in such a crowded world?

Of course the most obvious answer is to have a nice, professional looking site. It should be pleasing and represent your unique brand. 

Here are 10 more things to help keep website visitors on your site longer than 30 seconds.

1. Clarify Your Message. Donald Miller stresses this point and we agree. Don’t sacrifice clarity for cleverness. Your audience needs to understand your message in 30 seconds or less. We design websites. We say it up front so you don’t have to guess what Horizon Digital does.
2. Optimize Your Content. People don’t read online, they skim. A paragraph of text for a new website visitor might as well be a wall. Headers, bullets, images, and less text helps people skim.
3. Focus on Mobile First. A site on a desktop will be completely different than on a phone. Two sentences will look like a paragraph on a phone, what will 4 sentences look like? Less is more, so make those words count.
4. Optimize Your Layout. People skim the page in predictable eye-movement patterns. Make sure your content is placed to be seen and not overlooked.
5. Don’t Use Generic Images. Stock images are the best and worst thing to happen to websites. Some can give a site a professional edge, while others can be generic and uninteresting.
6. Make It Personal. People don’t connect with corporate mission statements, they connect with people who understand them.
7. Be Genuine. People can smell a sales pitch coming from a mile away. Try to focus on engaging with them in meaningful ways. One way to do this is trying to add real value to their lives.
8. Optimize Your Navigation. Convoluted navigation is usually the result of trying to cram too much information onto a site. Less is more.
9. Clear Call to Action. What do you want your website visitor to do – donate, buy, visit, sign-up, click? You need to be very clear and direct about what you want them to do.
10. Be Helpful. We have more success when we focus on how we can help people rather than what we can get out of them. Focus on building a relationship not just making a sale.