Make sure your site loads quickly
A slow-loading website is the last thing you want, especially when you are trying to woo young Internet users. Slow-loading websites are frustrating to anybody but are especially annoying to impatient, young visitors who want things to move at lightning pace.
While many teens and young people use second-hand devices to browse the Internet, others have a slow connection, thereby causing the web page load time to extend.
To make your website appear quickly, use adaptive images. Consider compressing your content, and steer clear of boggy or slow widgets and videos. You also must ensure that your site renders as soon as possible.
Avoid talking down to teens
Teens hate being called kids. They are fiercely proud of their newly-won status. To avoid repelling your teenage visitors, keep away from condescending or childish content. To engage your visitors, supplement your content with real images and stories by their peers. Also, try not to incorporate heavy animations and lurid color schemes.
While bright color schemes may work for your younger audience, they may repel your teenage visitors, making them feel that they are not taken seriously. If you want to address both teenagers and kids, have separate sections labeled ‘kids’ and ‘teens’.
Present content professionally
Young visitors get bored easily. To pique your visitors’ curiosity, you need to make a positive first impression. Content and layout are the first things that most visitors notice about a website.
A cluttered screen full of text can make them bored, distracted, and frustrated. To prevent this from happening, make sure your site is easy to navigate and scan. When explaining a concept, use illustrations. Display content in small chunks with enough white space.
To ensure your young visitors are able to grasp and retain information, use short and meaningful sentences and paragraphs, and utilize bullet points for clarity. Though most young people have perfect vision, they hate tiny font sizes.
Use multimedia and interactive features depending on usefulness, not because you think that they will appeal to your young visitors. Some interactive elements to use for young visitors include online quizzes, online polls, games, and features for creating, editing, and sharing content.
Optimize your website for mobile devices
The popularity of mobile devices is increasing among youngsters with every passing year. A substantial percentage of the youth population uses smartphones to browse the Internet.
To attract young visitors, you need to optimize your website for mobile devices. Make sure drop-down menus, small buttons, and drag-and-drop function flawlessly on mobile platforms.
Adopt the best practices when designing rollover effects and small click zones. Redesign pop-ups for mobile devices. To ensure your mobile version operates at peak performance, enable accelerate mobile pages.
Add easy to access games to your website
Young people love playing online games in their free time. Adding games to your website is one of the most effective ways to get young visitors hooked.
When doing this, however, you need to be extra cautious. Double-check for viruses and worms. Today’s generation is increasingly wary of viruses and malware.
Not asking your site traffic to create an account is the least you could do to address their concerns. Consider adding games that can be played through the browser alone.
Let them control what they share and how they share
Just because youngsters are hooked to the Internet doesn’t mean that they want to share everything. Websites that force young visitors to share content eventually fall out of favor. Your website must facilitate sharing, not force it.
Do not insist on visitors to register and then automatically make their information public. To make it easier for your users operating their mobile device to share content, provide a link to copy the web address.
Use images
Images, in addition to communicating messages, pique interest. An all-text website can bore young users. Using more images than necessary, on the other hand, will increase your website loading time. To make your visitors fall in love with your website, balance text, and visual content.
