3 Reasons Why Websites Fail to Pass the 15-Second Rule
You have a proficient website design for your business, you have your products and services listed over the site, and you are ready to draw attention from your clients. Still, people leave your website and shut off the tab in just 15 seconds. Do you wonder why? Know the 15-second rule. There might be things that you just neglected while you were designing your website. This might cost you a lot in the long run as well. Let us find out about these factors in detail.
What is the 15-Second Rule?
Let’s look at it from the other end! On an average, your audience takes just 15 seconds to judge your website’s integrity. This time span is enough for the visitors to judge if the website owns the features and functionality, they are looking for. Therefore, as a website owner, you need to make your website alluring to grab the audience’s attention in the first 15 seconds of landing on your site.
Let us elaborate more on the significance of the 15-second rule. As per the statistics, 55% of the website visitors leave the page within the first 15 seconds. Therefore, you have only 15 seconds to develop interest amidst the mind of the visitors for your brand and avoid high bounce rates. You might have to introduce many changes to your existing website to acquire this. Moreover, if you are planning to design a new website, keeping in mind this rule will be helpful for maximum outreach of your business over the web.
Before you start making changes to your website, you need to learn what went wrong first hand. Here are three important reasons that might be the root causes for users leaving your website. Referring to them, you can further decide upon making the necessary changes and alterations on priority.
Why Do Users Leave Your Website in Just 15 Seconds?
A path to rectifying things begins with identifying and analyzing the errors! This belief goes well with renovating your website as well. Following up, here are the three reasons that will educate you about the flaws that compel your visitors to leave the website.
1. Lack of Responsiveness and Long Page Loading Time
An extended page loading time is a prominent reason for causing the website visitors to leave within the first 15 seconds. Most of the people within your target audience are not patient at all, and you cannot change that. Many websites offer similar services, products, and information just like you do. So, the moment your website lags to load, the audience will switch over to your rivals furnishing the same information, but with a better page loading speed.
So, what should be the apt loading time? As per the statistics, around 40% of all users will reject a site if it doesn’t load within 3 seconds. Hence, this is the loading time you should focus on achieving! You can use the available tools such as Page Speed Insights by Google to test the speed of your website and its responsiveness to user commands. Upon detecting loopholes in the website speed, the tool can also provide you with a plethora of tips and suggestions to improve your site’s performance.
2. Poor Navigation and Lack of Information
If the website lacks navigational efficiencies, the users will find it complex to toggle through the categories and sections of your site. Besides, if your website is not reciprocating the information as per the expectations of the visitors, they will reject it instantly. When people land on your website, they expect to get the information, product, and service they are looking for. They don’t want to be in a mess of pop-ups, unwanted information, and advertisements.
Complex website navigation deprives the visitor to get important website insight. The navigation should hence be simple, and the priority categories should be on the top of your webpage. You can add links to the website, which should interest your brand’s audience. One important tip to simplify the navigation is to limit drop-down menus or pop-ups, as they are quite disruptive.
3. The Absence of ‘About Us’ Page
Apart from the complexity of a website, the next thing that makes people go off towards your brand is the lack of an ‘About Us’ page. Some visitors click on your site with a destined intention to buy your service or product. With that mindset, the first thing they would do is to search for your ‘About Us’ page. They would like to know about the services you offer and your credible experience in the concerned field.
Several new companies are not aware of the importance of putting a dedicated ‘About Us’ page on their website. This deteriorates the brand impression among a certain group of audience. People assume that if the brand is not willing to speak about it over their portfolio, they might not be proficient in what they offer. This impression eventually drives them away from your website. So, make sure to have an ‘About Us’ page on priority, because its absence can only deviate your potential visitors from your website.
Wrapping Up
These reasons that are most likely hampering your website appeal. You might be offering the best services or products of a particular type within the market. But if your website is not reciprocating quality, the audience will not even consider checking out the specifications of your offerings. So, count on these reasons and make optimizations to revive your site performance. If you are lagging behind in proper assistance to add appeal to your website, we are always there to help you out.
Our seasoned designers and developers work with sheer professionalism to improvise your website navigation, reduce the page load time, make your site highly responsive and all the requisite elements desired for it to pass the 15 second rule. Thus, our team holds adept experience in ensuring clicks from the most targeted visitors, which could ultimately boost your SERPs, enhance your conversion rates, and increase your business sales appreciably.
If you found this interesting, have any questions, or would like to learn more, our Branding Agency in Dubai can help, please drop us a line at puneet.ae