A well-designed and functional website is more important than ever for businesses. Websites are often the primary way that customers discover and engage with brands. If your website doesn’t meet visitors’ expectations, it could be hurting your business prospects more than you know.
According to one study, the average attention span of humans is just eight seconds. That’s one second shorter than that of a goldfish! For businesses, this means that it is harder than ever to capture customers’ attention, and keep it.
Importance of Website Performance and Design
If you do manage to get the attention of someone, those first few seconds are game changers.
When it comes to website visits, 47 percent of people expect a website to load within two seconds or less, and 40 percent will leave a site if it doesn’t load in three seconds.
The window to create a good impression for first time visitors is even smaller. First impressions last forever, and they are even more important online. Based on one statistic, it takes the average person .05 second or 50 milliseconds to form an impression of a website.
When the first impression is poor and visitors leave your site, they are also unlikely to return. In fact, over 88 percent of online visitors don’t return to a website after a bad experience. Loading times alone translate to about $2.6 billion in lost sales for online retailers each year.
How to Capture Attention–and Leads
What can businesses do to ensure that their user experience is capable of capturing and keeping the attention of = buyers?
If you manage to keep visitors’ attention for longer than the first two seconds, then that could translate to leads and sales. One eye-tracking study found that after the first 2.6 seconds, website visitors will land on the most influencial area of the website.
Since the main page is often the first thing that people see, it is important to have an aesthetically pleasing and uncluttered layout that quickly reflects what your business does and its benefits.
Secondly, for many businesses, landing pages and lead capture forms are key to marketing campaigns and sales. The average website may have numerous pages and images that pull visitors in various directions. If your business website doesn’t prompt visitors to perform a specific action, you may lose them to distraction.
However, a landing page or lead capture technology will have a strong message that compels users to perform a specific call to action, usually to provide their contact information such as email or phone number. Instead of users browsing your website and leaving forever, you’ll have a way to reach back out, re-engage and build a strong customer relationship.
It’s critical to have a high-performing and well-designed website, no matter whether a person is visiting from a desktop or mobile. With Hover Lead, it’s easy to create design-friendly and functional layouts that grab attention and help businesses capture leads.