One of the hardest things to do for any online business is to gain a high amount of traffic. Gaining high amounts of traffic to your website is brilliant, but you need to ask yourself a question… ‘Are people engaging with my website enough?’ After all, what’s the point of having high amounts of traffic if it’s not engaging for your visitors? Just think, if you’re able to increase engagement on your website this could dramatically increase website leads and sales. If you’re currently running any SEO or PPC campaigns then it’s even more important to increase website engagement.
In this article, I will be discussing 5 simple tips that you can start using on your website to help increase website engagement. If you find that any of these tips don’t seem to be working for your website, simply move onto the next tip to try and test.
Let’s get started…
1. Easy Navigation
Now this may sound like a pretty straightforward and simple tip, but you would be surprised at how many websites fail at this point! It’s all about simple navigation for your visitor, the easier it is for them to navigate around your website the easier it will be for them to visit more pages. Let’s take a real life store as an example, imagine walking into the store and straight away the aisles are in a confusing layout. If you were the store owner you would correct the aisles and make sure they were easy to navigate around right? So why not do the same for your website? Many online businesses forget that their website is the online portal straight into their business. It’s all about giving your website user the best experience possible, and the easier you make it for them to navigate around the site the better.
2. Give Visitors What They Want
When a visitor is on your website, 9 times out of 10, they know what they’re after and will search on your website until they find it. This means you need to give the visitor what they want. By this I mean make information easy to find and access. The easier it is for a visitor to find the information they’re after, the quicker it will be that they contact your business. This again fits into the point above. The easier you make it for a user, the better their experience and the more chance you have of converting them into a lead. The main point to take from this tip is to make sure information is easy to access and read. Here are some points on improving this:
- Make Headlines Relevant – If your headline matches exactly the topic on the page then this will make it easier for the visitor to find what they’re after. As well as making it relevant, you also want to make it so the visitor feels that they’re missing out on key information if they don’t read the rest of the page.
- Simple Layout – Don’t make a page too complicated and crowded with information. The easier it is to scan and read, the better. If a visitor lands on your page and feels overwhelmed with the amount of information, this may put them off and they could leave your website.
- Use Relevant Images – Again, similar to the headline point, make your images relevant to each page. This will make it easier for a visitor to find what they’re after.
- Keep Content Relevant – Make sure that the content on every page of your website is 100% relevant to that page, if it doesn’t quite match then create a new page for it. There is no problem with having to create more pages, the more quality content you can produce the better it is for your website.
3. Add More Than Just Text
Text information is great to have on your website but sometimes it’s worth testing other ways of showing information. People often forget that there are other formats that you can show information and data in. Depending what industry you’re in will mean you will show different kinds of information and data. Here are some different formats you can try:
- Video – Videos can be a great way to show information whilst increasing visitor engagement. If you’re able to produce an engaging video then this will mean people are more likely to stay on your website and watch the full video. As well as testing if videos work, you also want to test video placement on the page.
- Audio – Some people just prefer listening to information rather than having to read through it. You could add a play button to the page which then reads the text to the visitor. Not only will this address people that don’t like to read through information but it will also cater for people who have visual difficulties.
- Imagery – Possibly one of the most overlooked points on any webpage. You need to make sure that your imagery matches the information which is on the page. People often look at an image along with the headline and decide straight away if it’s something they’re interested in. Make sure you always use relevant images.
- Statistics & Charts – People love to see quick statistics and charts and if you’re in an industry which has a lot of statistics then certainly give this a try! If you’re able to include statistics and charts within your content on a webpage this can certainly increase website engagement for your audience.
4. Add Calls To Action (CTAs)
Calls to action can be fantastic for visitor engagement as they can prompt a user to go onto the next step of their online journey. Calls to action can range from ‘Contact us today’ to ‘Request a Free Quote’, it’s all down to where you add them on your website. Let’s say you’ve just added a new page which is all about a new service that you’re offering. The perfect Call to action for this page would be ‘Contact us about our new service today’. This would then prompt the user to actually contact you about your new service. If you’re unsure as to what makes a good Call to action, here is an article we posted about this subject - Four Tips for Developing Effective Call to Action Buttons.
5. Ask For Feedback
Gaining feedback isn’t just beneficial for your business, it’s also a great hidden way to engage your website visitors. Many people love to give feedback and when asked they’re happy to oblige, this goes for both offline and online. If you’re able to approach this in the right way it can be great for your business and your visitor. Firstly, you will be able to get some great information for what people think of your business and website and secondly, you can engage a new visitor into a potential new customer. One great tip is to offer the visitor an incentive to give feedback, a reward for their time. This could be X% off their next order, Free delivery, Free Quote or something more personal to them. Then once they give their feedback and receive their reward there is more chance that they will become a customer in the future. The main thing to remember is that you need to act on the feedback you’ve received, don’t just sit on it and forget. Always take action to improve either your business or your website.
Final Thoughts
Website engagement is such a crucial subject to discuss and no matter what you test and try you always want to increase this. The better you can increase your website engagement rate, the more rewards you will see for your work. You always need to be thinking of new ideas to test and be recording the results. If you have any questions then please feel free to comment below.
