Imagine if half the people that called your sales team hung up within 10 seconds. Not people they were cold-calling but interested people calling them. Heads would roll. At the very least, you’d want to know why so many people were disengaging. Chances are it’s happening to you right now, every day. Your sales team isn’t the problem; it’s your most visible and active company representative—the website.

There’s an easy to measure, but often overlooked number that can tell you a great

deal about the effectiveness of your website. The ‘short visit rate’ is the percentage

of visitors that leave your website within 10 seconds.

The percentage itself is not really important. Every website, every audience and

every industry is different. Even the most sophisticated websites can easily have 50

percent of visitors bailing early. What is important is what you’re doing to reduce

this number. Why? Because there is no cheaper way to repair the spout that feeds

your pipeline. While it may take months to test and correct your sales process,

telemarketing or direct mail efforts, the Web allows for rapid and cost-effective

testing. You can positively change your short visit rate in a few days, even a few

hours.

The Impact

If visitors to your site don’t stick around, they can’t request more information, take

the demo, sign up for the newsletter or do any of the things the site was designed

to make them do. It took considerable time and money to bring these visitors to

your site--each time one leaves, you’re squandering your general marketing and

advertising efforts and dollars. Worse, those visitors leaving are likely seeking

information or a solution elsewhere on the web. You’re helping create demand for

your competition.

The Cause

Short visits are usually a combination of two things--the wrong people coming and

your site’s inability to engage the visitor. This is particularly true when it comes to

traffic from search engines. Because these visitors are looking for something

specific (and usually in a hurry), it’s only logical that they would quickly bail if the

site doesn’t satisfy their needs.

What To Do About It

Luckily, we’re dealing with the web, where the data is rich and the adjustments are

easy. The first step is to see where you are. Ask your webmaster or web marketing

person to report on the percentage of both all visitors, and search visitors that are

leaving within 10 seconds. If they can’t get this information for you, enlist some

help or get a simple web traffic analysis tool, as this is basic data every

company should capture.

Once you get these numbers, don’t flip out. It’s just a baseline, a starting point

from which to improve. Ask yourself, ‘what might be causing these people to

leave?’. Visit your site in your prospect’s shoes. Might it be the non-differentiating

or overly technical message? Maybe the site just doesn’t look very professional.

Perhaps the majority of your prospects simply don’t like the color red. Most likely,

it’s the lack of any compelling reason to stay. If you don’t have something to grab

visitors’ attention and get them clicking for more, you can continue to expect poor

retention rates.

Sometimes I find it helpful with my clients to look at this problem from a traditional

point of view. What if this was a tradeshow booth? How could we get people to stay

at the booth longer? The key here is to work together with your sales and

marketing folks (notice we left the IT department out) to brainstorm and come to a

consensus as to what you suspect the single biggest problem might be. Once you

decide, have your webmaster make the necessary changes and measure the

difference. If you don’t get a whole lot of visits, it may take a long time to come to

a conclusion. This is where doing a quick pay-per-click advertising campaign can

come in real handy if for nothing else than to get some inexpensive market

research.

You’ve Got Nothing to Lose Except Business

It’s easy to dismiss this entire problem; after all, you probably didn’t know you had

a problem. And you can always add more sales reps and send out more mailers.

However, the ‘problem’ could actually be an opportunity in disguise—if you take

these first steps. You may be surprised how enthusiastic your web team and senior

management are about wanting to improve in this area. It is fun, challenging and,

unlike many other aspects of business, an effort that provides rapid and rich

feedback. Hold contests! Give the person or team that comes up with the most

dramatic improvement the corner office! He or she just made your company more

efficient and profitable.

Short-visit syndrome is something most executives don’t like to mention, let alone

talk about. Fortunately, confronting the issue head on and doing things to remedy

it is far less painful than you think and the results are well worth the effort.

Todd Miechiels is a B2B search marketing consultant who helps companies that suffer

from short-visit syndrome and other Internet marketing challenges. He has worked

with Georgia Pacific, Boston Scientific, DuPont, and numerous small and mid-market

B2B organizations. Todd's website is http://www.miechiels.com