3 Ways Your Website is Losing Readers

3 Ways Your Website is Losing Readers

Reader Comments (44)

  1. This is why I chose Genesis Themes, use W3 Total Cache and WP Manage correctly. Thanks Jerod, this was a great piece of information…so many times do I go to a site in my line of work and have to wait, wait and wait some more just for it to load….

  2. Thank you Jerod for putting this list together. I often struggle with the design elements and reworking layout, then overlook the other key elements. @williamsphotoky

  3. Great article Jerod, and a good reminder that I need to pay some serious attention to speed on my most important site. Most of my sites are WordPress based, but my important money site is built on Magento. I need to upgrade my hosting in a big way, so my question is, how does Sythesis handle Magento sites? Would I be better off only hosting my WP sites on Synthesis?

    Thanks.

    Brendon

    • Brandon, excellent question! You definitely want to bring your WordPress sites to us. We’ll take great care of them. As for Magento, you will likely be best served keeping it where it is. We are committed to being able to provide outstanding support to every customer site, and we simply have not had the demand for Magento to get in and really learn it. Plus, it has some specific requirements that do not jibe seamlessly with our stack and can make it a bit more of a pain on our side and yours to implement.

      • Thanks Jerod. I had a feeling that might be the case… Magento can definitely be a pain if things don’t gel well on the server… ๐Ÿ™‚

  4. I’m using Genesis on WordPress just because they said it would help my website to do all those behind the scenes things right. Just to test, I tried my website through google. It was less than a second. ๐Ÿ™‚

  5. Wow. Thanks so much for this. My site is in need of some help page loading with this so I’m already taking steps to fix that now! I realized how much of an issue Disqus Commenting is with many people, so I deactivated it.

    Now, it’s on to resizing some of the photos and uploading photos I had hosted on Photobucket straight to WordPress instead. Lots of work ahead, but it will be worth it!

    • Christin, what an excellent point you bring up. Photo size is a HUGE element of load times. There is simply no reason to upload the 2 MB source photo, yet I see so many people do it. Almost all photos can be viewed just fine between 100KB-200KB max. Obviously it can be different if your site is related to photography, or you have specific needs for the higher resolutions. But for most of us, pictures should be small enough that they are barely a blip on the page load radar.

  6. Great post. I’m starting a website design business and have been struggling with the mobile side of things. StudioPress looks like a good option so that I can focus on the design elements and content writing and not have to worry about a separate design for mobile. They take care of this for me, right?

    A bit of a sidetrack, but could you please help me understand Synthesis specific to website design businesses? It looks like it’s meant to host individual websites, not multiple client websites contained within a single account. Can you recommend a WordPress-friendly hosting company that allows for reselling and client management?

    It’s been a struggle finding a good partnership of services that are affordable but also solid and secure. Thanks!

    • Carla, StudioPress will definitely take care of the design elements for you. Content writing still needs to come from you, or your clients, but of course we’re here at the blog to help you out with that!

      As for Synthesis, we can host individual websites and also have a number of designers who manage accounts with 10, 20, or even more client sites. Our Pro and Advanced plans are perfect for this setup actually.

      https://purchase.websynthesis.com/plans.aspx?oid=

  7. Slow load times is a big one. I used to be on GoDaddy (eww.) and my sites load times were horrendous, I’m talking 20 seconds plus, in fact sometimes it wouldn’t load at all – I’d get a server error.

    I put up with this for a long time, but it just wasn’t helping at all. Now keep in mind at this point I didn’t have an income (I still don’t, really) but I did have readers, which were getting annoyed. I’ve since changed hosts and optimized my website thoroughly.

    Typography is an interesting one, I feel as if my font is a little to ‘in your face’, and goes against the passive nature of my niche. Also, thanks to Studiopress my theme is responsive! ๐Ÿ™‚ good to see an article about design related aspects as well as general copywriting. Cheers!

    • Sam, that is the issue with generic hosting. So many sites of so many different types are herded in the 10s and 100s onto shared servers, and it’s impossible to have good or consistent service. Heck, Synthesis was developed in the first place because one of my sites was getting traffic throttled by a generic hosting provider. We finally said enough is enough!

  8. I did not realize that website loading speed determines the value and effectiveness of marketing. It’s amazing that it had not crossed my mind. Thank you for making clear me of this fact.

    • Jacob, a lot of people don’t realize it. Stick with us, and I promise we’ll keep you abreast of all the new developments (like Google+) that affect what we all do as content marketers.

  9. Speed is a killer (disclosure: I run RUMAnalytics). If you do any ecommerce speed is THE factor in conversions. I saw a report the other day saying 67% of people abandon their cart because of speed alone…. That’s if you keep them long enough to actually chose to buy something. It’s only getting more important in mobile.

    • WOW. 67% abandon the cart? As in after they’ve already made choices to purchase and are ready to checkout? That is an astonishingly high number at first glance, though not all that surprising once you think about it in relation to other stats about visitor impatience.

  10. Your font size is fairly small. I hate having to shift + to make sites easier to read. Small fonts make it harder to read for many people.

  11. One of the easiest ways to have your sites load faster is by resizing and optimizing images. This is a free site I found that does it for you http://www.imageoptimizer.net/Pages/Home.aspx if you you want a quick option.

    The article you linked to on fonts affecting mood was interesting but I wish they could have provided more tested results regarding which fonts are good and which are not. They only really gave a couple of options, Georgia and Verdana, both of which have been touted as good web site options in other articles.

  12. Website forms am integral part of today’s marketing management, any prospect or client will first refer to your website for seeking out details of your offering, to know about your market position and to dig into your business, intelligent is the marketer who spends quality time and efforts to develop a impressive website interface to Shockley his/her company’s capability in terms of business offerings. I am happy to be part of content management team at Synechron where i get the opportunity to provide fresh executable ideas to increase our website worth.

  13. A slow loading website can be very frustrating, worse still if the site is yours and you have been talking to your web hosting company about that and they give deaf ears to all your complaints.

      • Thanks for your reply to my question above.

        I’d love to join Synthesis. Setting aside my web business for now, I’d like to migrate my two personal sites to your hosting company. But it’s $99/month. That’s a lot of money for me. I’m struggling to understand the difference between your service and HostGator. What I do grasp definitely makes me want to sign up, but I don’t understand why it costs so much to host just two websites.

        • Carla,

          There is no reason why you would need to spend $99/month to host with Synthesis. You can get two Starter plans for $27/month and experience huge gains over a shared hosting environment from a non-WP specific host like HostGator. And therein lies the major difference: we ONLY host WordPress sites, we provide unmatched support for WordPress hosting issues, and even our shared servers have a max of 10 sites on them. If you are looking to take the next step as a WordPress site owner, going with a managed host that focuses exclusively on WordPress (and that is specifically tuned for Genesis while being well-versed in “the Copyblogger way”) is the way to go.

          • Thanks, Jared. So that’s $27 per website, which is still a lot of money for me. I’d sure appreciate a blog post written in laymen’s terms that really helps differentiate between generic hosting (HostGator, etc) and your service. And also WP Engine. Their pricing is similar. :o)

  14. Hey thanks for the post.

    Designing is what I have been focusing on lately. Remembering that design is super important to my readers.

    For real, I needed that tip!

  15. My website was suffering from slow load time while it was placed with a renowned web host. Slowly, the traffic started to decline and within a month it dropped by almost 50%. When I got no clue as to why it is happening, I just changed my web host and after few weeks only, it started to gain the lost traffic. Even Google takes website loading time as one of the factor in deciding the rank of a blog in SERP.

  16. Thanks Jerod, this was a great piece of information… I’m using Genesis on WordPress which work fantastic. Just thinking about getting Synthesis so I will have a complete well working website. I think that Synthesis is a great hosting and can solve website speed loading.

  17. Although your points are right on, the technical end of keeping a blog, speed, RSS, SEO, and other behind the content aspects are my weakest area. I do slowly learn and I think my site is tuned up fairly well right now. However, I sometimes find that some very popular sites begin to have problems, especially with loading time. When that happens I’m much less likely to visit them.

  18. Very true about the cost-ineffectiveness, as well as major safety concerns over time. Not only will braking be less efficient, but the wear on the insides of the hubs will make quick stops much less quick…

  19. Very wise advice.

    There have been numerous times when I stop at a website and look at the typography they are using and clicked back with disgust.

    It really surprises me when I see people’s choices for the typography they use. I don’t think it’s a hard decision to make, but people seem to have difficulty with it.

    In relation to site loading time, I completely agree. I recently had some website loading issues, and I immediately dealt with the situation because I know that if I go on a site that takes longer than a couple seconds to load, there’s no way I’m going to read what’s on the website.

    Lovely post.

  20. In my experience with niche websites, the main 2 factors affecting bounce rate are speed and design with too much ads (before any content). Honestly, speed thing can be solved by reducing a number of images on the website or with hosting solutions. The main problem is the positioning of your ads. If they are shown on the website before any content or useful information, then readers will leave it immediately at a first glance. That is why Google added this element to its algorithm some times ago.

    • I completely agree. If people don’t go to your site due to speed, you are missing out on potential money you could be making.

      It’s crazy how important speed is.

  21. Many of us are guilty of closing a website when it take a lot of time loading or buffering. Well, I won’t deny it, I’m of those people. It is also necessary to consider the design of your website. Mind if I add this , choose the appropriate colors that is pleasant to the eyes of the readers. Anyway, great article Jerod. ๐Ÿ™‚

  22. One of the main reason I think people leave that I have noticed is slow loading and poor navigation if they dont know where to go next they leave .Thats why its good have popular post or related post

  23. Thanks for your contribution here: really enjoyed reading it.

    Good points. People have notoriously short attention spans and won’t put up with slow. They will move on to other things that are important. You have to be careful about this if you have a blog or website. Cheers.

  24. Most people think theri site is awesome no matter what…big mistake. You are marketing to an audience! You have to give them what THEY want. I can’t tell you haow many times I have gotten into it with clients that think they know how a site is supposed to look to get them more customers. It’s like they don’t get it. Its all about the customer, not the bosses ego. They all find out the hard way!

    Normally these are people whose ggrandpappy started the biz and handed them the keys so they could run it straight into the ditch.

    Thanks for this. People need to see it!!

    Romeo

  25. It’s really amazing to know all of the different ways your website can be modified and that each modification can seriously affect your desirability. I am a long time fan of Glenn Livingston Phd/Internet Marketer, who said most people don’t think about the fact they could be “unselling” their customers. It’s so true! Thanks for this write up.

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