Capturing and keeping the attention of website visitors

Getting people to visit your website is only the first step to making it successful. Once they arrive, you need to immediately capture and keep their attention to make sure they want to stay.

People can lose interest quickly. Another website is only a click away. A Web visitor who loses interest will leave, possibly never to return. How do you ensure this doesn't happen to you?

In this month's newsletter we give you some tips on how to quickly capture the attention of people who come to your website.

Explore multimedia enhancement possibilities

Multimedia enhancements like video and audio are the latest "popular" features for websites. They are an attractive way to capture attention and interest. With Internet speeds on the rise around the world, and website bandwidth getting cheaper, now is a great time to consider if multimedia enhancements are suitable for your site. Some video sharing websites will even let you embed video files they host directly into your website's code, meaning that your site's bandwidth doesn't even get used!

Write good Web content

Writing for the Web is quite different to most other forms of writing you might be used to. The way in which you write and present your site's content can be a major factor in whether people decide to stay or leave. For an overview of how to write for the Web, go to the article 'Writing for the Web'.

Make sure search engines send the right visitors to you

Chances are that you go to a lot of effort to optimise your website's content to make it search engine friendly. It is important that the search engine optimisation you undertake targets the right visitors. For example, if the purpose of a website is to sell household appliances, but search engines are sending visitors who are looking for user manuals, the website might have a lot of traffic, but the traffic isn't suitable. If search engines are sending the "wrong" visitors by mistake, it's likely that you are missing out on the "right" visitors. A good indication of whether search engines are sending the right visitors to your site is to check your site's logs, which will include details of the links people click on search engines to go to your site. If a large number of the search strings shown in the website logs aren't relevant to your site, it means that search engines are misinterpreting your site's purpose, and you'll need to re-optimise your site appropriately.

For information about accessing and checking your website's log files, see the article 'Understanding a website's log file' .

Use a header panel that captures attention

When people arrive on your website for the first time, their eyes will first look at its header. It is therefore vital that its design is "eye-catching", creates interest and makes it clear what your website is about. Your website might be perfect for what a person is looking for, but if they mistakenly believe your site is about something else, they may leave before reading its content.

Use descriptive headings

The main heading for each webpage should be as descriptive as possible. People will read the heading before deciding whether to read the rest of the site's content. For example, the descriptive webpage heading "Perennial Flowers in the Northern Hemisphere" is better than a non-descriptive heading like "Introduction". Descriptive headings will also help improve your search engine rank.

Use images for emphasis

Adding images towards the top of webpages can help emphasise its purpose. Images are particularly helpful if your page contains a lot of text that takes longer to read.

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