Online shoppers today have extremely short attention spans. Microsoft Research conducted a study in which they examined just that. By analyzing dwell times on web pages, Microsoft found compelling data indicating a negative correlation between the time a user spends on a page and their likelihood of leaving that page or bouncing.
If you don’t feel like reading the entire research report, Jakob Nielsen gives a great outline of their findings in his article “How Long Do Users Stay on Web Pages.” Essentially what their research found was that most people only spend about ten seconds on a web page before leaving, and the subsequent 20 seconds have extremely high exit rates as well. Users will quickly scan a page for relevant information and leave if they don’t find it.
The longer one spends on a page, the less likely one is to leave that page, an indication of how engaged one is on the web page and how accurately the page fulfills their needs. Once a user reaches the 30-second mark the rate at which they leave dramatically slows down compared to the initial 30 seconds.
By understanding and tracking this data on your site, you can create a page that more effectively communicates the value of your vehicle to your customer, grabs users’ attention and, most importantly, keeps them on your site rather than on the competition’s.
