How to Maximise Page Views on Your Site

increase page views

Nearly half of the internet users out there expect your site to load in 2 seconds or less. If it doesn’t load in that much time, they’ll lose interest in it and click the Back button – every webmaster’s nightmare. Having your site’s visitors bounce has a butterfly effect regardless of the niche you’re in. Decrease in viewers leads to fewer subscriptions which results in less shared content (or a lost in sales for e-commerce sites).

In this article, we’ll show you how you can maximize your site’s page views with tried and tested methods that you can start implementing today without compromising on the user experience and value that your site delivers.

Content Is King

It’s easy to lose focus of the content you’re promoting, selling or trying to get visitors to read while you put up flashy, eye-catching widgets and bars to draw in more readers. Ironically enough, your attempt to increase traffic is actually causing an unintended decrease.

Remember that your content is the reason people landed on your site in the first place. Instead of distracting readers with 1996-style Flashy (pun intended) content, focus your reader’s attention to the content alone. Help Scout does an excellent job of eliminating distractions on their blog.

Notice how they don’t have a sidebar full of recent posts and related articles that you should check out or fancy widgets asking for subscriptions? Readers will focus on the content and read some more posts if they like it. Have some faith in your content and remove all of the unnecessary distractions.

Fair to say in writing this post we’ve been thinking about our own blog too, and we too have work to do in this regard.

Link One, Link All

We’ve all read hundreds of articles on the Internet so let me ask you: what is the one thing that’s common between all of them? Links! Linking your content to reputable sources improves your site’s ranking, gives your words credibility and gives your readers an opportunity to get more information.

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This post itself has tons of links to some high-authority websites. When it comes to linking, most authors prefer linking within the website (also called internal linking) to keep the viewers from leaving. Enticing as it may be, the question you should actually be asking yourself is: ‘Which linked source would deliver the most value to anyone reading this post?’.

Page Optimization

When 47% of your site’s potential traffic expects your web page to load in under 2 seconds, you have to take some essential steps to meet their expectations. The best way to ensure your page is optimized to its full capacity is to install a reputable caching plugin. We wrote the definitive post on caching plugins and as a result highly recommend WP Rocket (premium) and WP Super Cache (free). Both are excellent solutions that’ll make your site blazing fast.

To take it to the next level, if you find yourself uploading tons of images to your site then we advise that you compress your images before uploading them. This will save you a ton of space and speed up your site dramatically. Tools like TinyPNG are used by thousands of savvy webmasters but if you’d prefer a plugin then EWWW Image Optimizer is the way to go.

Be sure to test your site for page load times regularly on Pingdom or GT Metrix to see how well you’re doing with page optimization.

Branding Basics

The most important factor that makes up a site’s brand is its logo – everything else is a derivative. Once you’ve designed a logo that really captures your goals, missions, and value in its entirety, proudly display it on your web pages.

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We follow the WP Dev Shed brand devotedly across all of the pages on our site.
Remember to maintain consistency throughout your site which means that your color scheme, favicon, and menus should reflect your brand. Establishing your website’s brand properly will make it visually appealing, give it a professional look, and make it recognizable to readers.

Usability Matters

Getting caught up in creating the perfect, good-looking site often takes away from its usability. By following all of the above-mentioned techniques, you’ll be able to make your visitors stay on your site for more than a few seconds, but if they realize that navigating through your site is difficult, it’s safe to assume they’ll bid you farewell instantly.

Smashing Magazine has a search bar on their home page along with a menu bar and side bar that enables users to find what they’re looking for by making navigation easy.

On the other hand, spotting a search bar or a well-designed menu can guarantee they’ll stick around and continue to look for what they need. Sticky headers (also called fixed navigation) have become a popular implementation among web designers to escalate usability.

Wrapping It Up

Boosting your site’s viewership isn’t rocket science and by following a few, simple techniques you’ll be able to improve those numbers radically without breaking the bank. First impressions make all the difference when you’re in a pursuit to acquire new visitors.

New visitors are like toddlers – you want to lure them in with shiny things and then give them what they wanted all along, praise-worthy content (or merchandise in case of an e-commerce site).

Which techniques do you use to draw increase page views? Have any of the techniques we suggested led to favorable results? Let us know in the comments section below!

Charlie has been building WordPress themes, reviewing web hosts and utilizing social media since their respective inceptions.

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