Did you know that you have about 15 seconds to capture the attention of people once they arrive on your website?

That’s not a lot of time.

In fact, if you haven’t grabbed the attention of a site visitor within 15 seconds of landing on your site, you can pretty much kiss a conversion goodbye.

After all, people that don’t like what they see aren’t going to stick around for long.

If you’ve spent countless hours publishing content and building a social media presence, and are still wondering why sales in your eCommerce shop are barely trickling in, keep reading.

Today we’re going to take a look at the top 5 reasons people abandon websites and what you can do to fix them so you can convert more leads and generate more sales.

1. Your Site is Slow

40% of people will abandon your website if it doesn’t load within 3 seconds or less, no matter what you have to offer.

That’s why placing all your focus on how to make money from home isn’t going to cut it if you want to be successful.

Sure, you might have post valuable content, have an exceptional lead magnet encouraging people to subscribe, and even have trending products for people to buy at killer prices.

You might have even started a dropshipping business, so you don’t have to worry about inventory or shipping, giving you more time to market your brand and items.

But the truth is, even if your business site is set up perfectly for customers, if it takes too long to load once someone arrives, they’ll bounce immediately.

To fix this problem, you need to monitor the speed and performance of your website on a regular basis.

And, if you use the free online tool, Google PageSpeed Insights, you can do just that.

Once you enter your site’s URL, this free tool analyzes the speed and performance of both your desktop and mobile websites, so you know just how fast it’s loading for site visitors.

Check out these simple ways to increase the speed of your website and prevent people from leaving right away:

• • Use a CDN to deliver content based on geography

• • Enable browser caching for return visitors

• • Compress images into smaller file sizes

• • Use a reliable hosting provider

• • Minify CSS, JS, and HTML files

• Reduce server requests

By giving people a seamless user experience, you significantly increase your chances of landing a sale because people will be spending more time on your site.

2. Poor Web Design

There’s a lot that goes into web design and your site’s bounce rate.

In fact, here are just some of the design elements that may cause a person to abandon a site immediately:

• • Inconsistent color schemes

• • Poor content structure that’s not easy to skim

• • Lack of imagery to break up text

• • Unclear call to action buttons

• • Poor navigational menu setup

• Difficult to understand link text

Lastly, using too many web fonts can be extremely distracting to site visitors and cause them to leave your site before converting.

The key to keeping people on your website is to have clear navigation, easily readable content, understandable CTAs, and consistent branding when it comes to fonts, colors, and logos.

3. Too Many Ads

It’s understandable to have advertisements on your website.

After all, you may get enough daily traffic to be able to sell ad space on your website to others looking to capitalize on your large audience.

Or, maybe you’re looking to monetize your site by using Google AdSense throughout your site’s content in hopes that relevant products will entice people to click and buy.

Regardless of why you have ads on your website, always remember, people don’t want to visit your site and see nothing but ads.

Think about it.

Your website is already asking people for their hard-earned cash.

If you display too many ads on your site, you risk ruining the user experience and making customers feel as though all you want is their money.

And anyone that feels that way is sure to leave your website right away when they see too many ads.

Here are some things to avoid when displaying ads on your site, so you don’t accidentally boost your own bounce rate:

• • Don’t let ads be the first thing people see once they land on your site

• • Avoid too many intrusive popup ads, especially if they have nothing to do with what you’re selling

• Stay away from using so many ads that they take up more real estate on your site than actual content

Having ads on your website is a legitimate way to monetize your blog.

However, if you want to really succeed as an online business owner, you’ll put the user experience first and display ads in non-intrusive, tasteful ways.

4. It’s Not Clear What You Offer

When people arrive on your website, it’s important they know immediately what you have to offer. After all, people don’t have long attention spans.

And when your site visitors come to your site, they’re looking for something that interests them.

Besides having a well-designed home or landing page, complete with a value proposition, clear CTAs, and an easy to use navigation menu, there is one other element to think about: your domain name.

People can tell a lot about your website based on its domain name, if you’ve chosen wisely.

On the other hand, if you buy a domain name that has nothing to do with what you offer site visitors, there’s going to be lots of confusion when people land on your site.

And when this happens, most people will abandon your site because you don’t have what they want.

When it comes to choosing your business site’s domain name, follow these tips:

• • Include keywords that relate to your business so you rank well and customers know immediately what you have for sale

• • Make it easy to type and remember so people can revisit your site many times

• • Conduct your research and avoid overly competitive domain names and similar versions

• • Pick from the top domain name extensions: .com, .net, and .org

• • Avoid trademark infringement

• Aim for an evergreen name so your business can evolve with time and you can hold tight to your customer base

Your site’s domain name may seem insignificant. But in reality, the URLs that appears in people’s browsers have a lot of influence over traffic, conversions, and sales.

5. Videos Are on Auto-Play

There’s nothing that’s going to cause your site visitors to click the “Back” button faster than a piece of video content that is set to auto-play anytime they land on your site.

Don’t get us wrong. People love video content, and those numbers are not looking to decline anytime soon.

But people also want control over what they watch and when.

After all, if the volume is up on your screen, whether it’s a desktop, laptop, or smartphone, the last thing you want to hear is some random video blaring once you click on a site.

Stop driving customers away by forcing them to view your video content once they arrive on your site.

Instead, give them the opportunity to click “Play” and watch your content on their own time.

6. Your Site Isn’t Responsive

48.2% of all internet traffic comes from mobile devices. If your website isn’t catering to those on the go, you risk losing out on tons of leads and sales.

And this problem only increases when you rely on people that can’t access your site on their mobile device to come back once they’re at a desktop computer.

Because chances are, they’re not going to come back.

Just like your site’s speed and performance, you should always monitor how well your website renders on mobile devices.

And using a free online tool like Responsive Checker makes that super simple.

Not only will you immediately find out whether your site is mobile-friendly or not, but this tool will also let you check multiple device types: laptops, smartphones, and tablets.

Plus, you can interact with your website on each device to see how navigating through your sales funnel is for people on the go.

From there, any problems you find you can fix right away.

There’s a lot that goes into optimizing your website; making your site mobile-friendly is one of the most important and should never be neglected.

Final Thoughts

In the end, many factors go into why your website is driving customers away, rather than convincing them to stay and convert as subscribers or buyers.

And, while you may not be able to pinpoint them all right away, if you keep this list of common reasons in mind while checking out your site’s bounce rate, you’ll find that the small improvements suggested can go a long way.

So, take a long hard look at how your site behaves for customers and what they experience when they click on your site.

And remember, if it would be annoying to you and cause you to bounce, that’s probably what your customers are thinking too.