You have invested your resources in building your fitness website and everything looks perfect. And after some time, you are now getting visitors to your fitness website. But, you may notice that people are leaving your website without interacting with it or converting.
It's usually due to a combination of SEO-related problems. For that reason, you would do well to read up on Search Engine Optimization, so that you can make tweaks to your website, in order to squeeze the most out of your rankings in Google and the other search engines.
The question is, what may be causing visitors to abandon your fitness website without converting? Well, several reasons may lead to this issue. In this article, we will take a closer look at some of the reasons why visitors may be leaving your site. We will also provide some potential solutions to these issues.
1. Your Site Loads Slowly
If your health and wellness website takes forever to load, most of your visitors will likely leave. And once they leave your site, they will simply go to your competitors’ sites, something that you want to avoid as much as you can.
The question is, how fast should your fitness website load? According to Pingdom, your fitness website should be loading within two seconds at most. Therefore, if it’s taking more than two seconds to load, most of your visitors will abandon it and seek options elsewhere.
So, how can you improve your website page load speed? Here are some tips and suggestions to consider:
1.1 Reduce the Size of Your Images
Without a doubt, images help to improve the appearance of your fitness website. Also, they will enhance the quality of the content posted on your website. But, if the images that you’ve used on your site are too large, they can slow down your website considerably. Therefore, something as simple as reducing the size of the images on your website can help to improve the loading speed.
1.2 Choose a Better Hosting Package
While purchasing a shared hosting package may be inexpensive, it will be costing you more money in the long run, especially when you consider all the visitors that are abandoning your site without converting. Hence, it will be advisable to shift to virtual private hosting or dedicated web hosting, if your budget will allow. Upgrading from shared hosting to VPS or dedicated web hosting will go a long way in boosting your site’s loading speed.
1.3 Reduce the Number of Plugins
Plugins are components that help to extend the functionality of a website. The problem is, the higher the number of plugins that you install on your site, the more resources that you will need to keep them running. Consequently, your website will also be working slower.
So, it will be advisable to check all the plugins you’ve installed on your fitness website and delete the unnecessary or obsolete ones. Also, ensure the remaining plugins are up to date.
1.4 Additional Tips to Improve Your Site’s Loading Speed
- Leverage website caching
- Use a content delivery network
- Reduce HTTP requests
- Reduce the number of CSS and JavaScript files
- Enable Gzip compression
2. Your Site is Not Optimized for Mobile Devices
According to Statista, mobile devices account for more than half of web traffic globally. Hence, if your fitness website is doesn’t function or display properly on tablets, phones and other mobile devices, a considerable percentage of your visitors will abandon your site without converting.
One of the easiest ways of determining whether your website is displaying properly on mobile devices is to conduct the Google Mobile-Friendly Test. You simply need to enter its URL and test its performance.
If the test says that your website is not mobile-friendly, then you will need two options. First, you can opt to create a separate version of your fitness website, optimized for mobile devices. Second, you can simply implement a responsive design on your site. By implementing a responsive design, your health and wellness website will be displaying properly across all devices.
3. Complex Navigation
If your fitness website has complex navigation and your visitors are finding it hard to find what they are looking for, there’s a high chance they will leave. So, you need to ensure that it has a clear navigation path, which will take them directly to the information they are looking for. And you can achieve this using clear calls to action.
Placing clear calls-to-action on your site will help to guide your visitors through your fitness site, making it easy for them to find what they are looking for. So, if a visitor is supposed to sign up for your weekly newsletter or purchase your membership, your website should guide them accordingly and make it easy for them to perform these tasks.
4. Excessive Placement of Ads
As much as placing third-party ads on your fitness website can help you to generate some additional revenue, excessively placing them can push some visitors away. Also, if they are too many, they will distract the visitor, meaning they will leave your site without converting.
Furthermore, too many ads, especially videos, can slow down your website. And as mentioned earlier, most visitors will abandon a slow-loading website. So, make sure you avoid placing too many ads on your site. They will push some of your visitors away, distract your visitors from converting and slow down your site. And all these will lead to a high bounce rate.
Besides reducing the number of ads, you should also ensure the remaining ones are strategically placed, to prevent navigational issues.
5. Misused Popups
Pop-ups can help to increase conversions on a website. But, if you use them excessively on your site, they will end up driving some of your visitors away. So, if you have to use pop-ups on your site, you should only use those that will have a positive impact. Also, you should ensure that the popups that you use on your website are easy to dismiss.
Furthermore, you should configure the popups in such a way that they will only launch after the visitor has spent some time on the site or when they are exiting. By doing so, you will avoid distracting or annoying the visitor. As a result, they will interact longer with your website and stay longer, thus increasing the chances of a conversion.
6. Automatically Playing Multimedia
Automatically playing media may yet be another reason why some of your visitors may be leaving your fitness website quickly. And there are two main reasons why automatically videos and audios may be pushing away your visitors.
First, automatically playing videos and photos may slow down your site. And slow-loading websites have a high bounce rate. Second, by automatically playing videos and audios on your fitness website, you are somehow forcing the visitor to consume content they may not want. And as you may expect, that visitor will close your website very fast, since they will consider it an intrusion.
Simply put, avoid placing automatically playing content on your site. It’s annoying and distracting. And if you have to put it there, make sure it will only launch after the visitor has been on your site for a couple of minutes and consumed some of your content.
7. Stale Content
You may be having the fastest-loading website in your niche. But, if your content is stale, outdated, or its quality is poor, this may be enough to push some of your visitors away.
So, make sure you keep your site up to date. You can do this by refreshing the content on your website regularly. Good looking graphics will go a long way to help you spruce up your site. Also, make sure the content on your website is unique. It should be something that visitors can’t find on your competitors’ websites.
Furthermore, you should make sure the content on your website is relevant and compelling enough, to give the visitor enough reasons to stay.
By creating relevant, informative, unique and compelling content and posting it regularly, you will establish yourself as an authority in your niche, your visitors will stay longer, the bounce rate will be low and your conversion rate will be high.
8. Your Site Appears Unsecure
Security concerns can also scare some of your visitors, making them leave your fitness site. To avoid such issues, make sure you have installed an SSL certificate on your site. And this is even more important if your fitness website accepts online information.
It would also be advisable to display recognized trust symbols on your site permanently. For instance, security badges from renowned website security providers can help to make your website look trustworthy and secure.
By making your health and wellness website secure, you will give your visitors the feeling that your business is credible. And this element of trust will go a long way in helping your visitors to stay longer.
9. Complex Sign-up Process
If you sell memberships using your fitness website, you should make sure your check-out process is simple and fast. If it’s complex or it consumes a considerable amount of time, it will frustrate potential clients. As a result, they will simply abandon it and purchase memberships elsewhere. So, you need to ensure that your checkout process is seamless and simple to follow.
10. Wrapping It Up
Your fitness website is key when it comes to generating leads. Therefore, you need to keep its bounce rate as low as possible, to ensure it can generate as many leads as possible. By implementing the tips and strategies that we’ve discussed in this article, you can manage to reduce the number of visitors leaving your site.