Do you know how many people visit your website in a year, month or even a day? We’ve been tracking many of the websites that we’ve created over the last year and have some interesting results from Alaskan as well as global users. First, some general usage facts: 12% of the world’s population that lives in North American and Western Europe can account for 60% of the world’s private spending (www.worldwatch.org). As of 2015, internet usage has penetration the population of the US by 87.9%. For perspective, the average internet usage penetration worldwide is only 46.1% (internetworldstats.com). On the local sites we tracked, visitors came from 15 countries and 16 states.
One question that we ask is where are our visitors spending most of their time and how do they navigate the website? On average, our Alaskan visitors spend about a minute longer than the average user on each site. Home pages still rank very high on visits, but with limited time spent there. Consistently, the most visited pages of the sites we track are About Us and Contact Us. Most of our visitors are spending one to three minutes on the About Us page; this is quite a long time given that the overall average time a person spends on one page is under a minute.
Users’ attention span is shortening so your website needs to be a space where your visitors want to stay, — rather than move on to your competitor’s site. Creating a positive brand experience through a website can result in new connections and, in turn, business.
When creating new websites, we use a grid system, which is a framework for a dynamic and engaging design that isn’t too busy. Whether users know it or not, the grid is a key factor in creating that positive experience, or “aesthetic-usability effect.” Rob Szumski’s blog says it best: “the Aesthetic-Usability effect is the perception that more aesthetically pleasing interfaces are easier to use than less aesthetically pleasing ones.”
By tracking our visitors’ locations, time spent on a site and specific pages, and by creating captivating website designs, we ensure that our users are finding more valuable sources online, so we’re all getting results!