Website engagement is a must for online businesses because it increases product sales and customer loyalty. Customers who are engaged tend to bring in 23% more profit and overall growth.
Website engagement is measured through page clicks, bounce rate, and average time spent by the users. If you feel your website’s engagement is lacking, you need to improve your website’s overall quality.
This article will go through 10 tips that can help you boost website engagement. Read along.
1. Create a Responsive Website
By definition, a responsive website is compatible and accessible on all devices. It provides a more comfortable user experience, which encourages longer average session duration and higher conversion rates.
Considering 85% of customers expect a business website to look and function smoothly no matter the device it’s accessed on, website responsiveness should not be overlooked.
The easiest way to create a responsive website is by using an online store builder. Most of them come with responsive templates for just about any website type. The average price for website builders ranges from $2.90 to $12/month.
2. Improve Website Structure
Improving the website structure means organizing website aspects, like media, navigational elements, and content. There are three essential benefits of having a well-structured website.
First, it boosts SEO rankings as search engines can index and crawl your website with ease.
Second, it lets you compete with other websites by structuring better internal website links.
Third, it improves user experience, especially for first-time visitors.
Also, consider improving website structure by building a clear wireframe, removing old content, and improving navigation with page categorization. Finally, don’t forget to pay attention to SEO when structuring or redesigning the website.
3. Practice Effective Internal Linking
Internal linking is when you add links from your website to other pages within your site. It’s related to website structure improvement, and it’s effective in reducing the bounce rate.
Additionally, it shows Google your best-performing articles for better keyword competition. In the long run, internal linking can significantly benefit your site ranking on the search engine results page.
The best practices for internal linking begin with understanding your site navigation. The links should support the user journey by taking them from one page to another seamlessly.
Moreover, add anchor text to your links and always use relevant keywords to encourage clicking, as more page clicks lead to a higher engagement rate.
4. Increase Page Loading Speed
When a web page loads for 3 seconds, the bounce rate rises to 32%. Therefore, page loading speed matters in maintaining website engagement and reducing potential loss in revenue.
Your page loading speed depends on your web hosting and website capacity. Test your page speed with tools like Pingdom or Google PageSpeed Insights to see if it’s optimal or if it needs upgrading.
As for website capacity, clean up your HTML files, compress large media files, delete unnecessary data, documents, and website software to increase the page loading speed.
5. Display Related Products
Displaying related products is a marketing tactic that encourages customers to purchase more. This tactic works to increase sales while maintaining engagement and improving the customer shopping experience.
The key to displaying related products is relevance. The more relevant and valuable the related products are, the better it is for the customers.
It also matters where you place the related products. Typically, it’s at the bottom or sidebar of the product page, but consider adding them on the Cart page too.
The simplest way to display related products is by using built-in product recommendation software that comes with the website themes or plugins, like the ones in WooCommerce and Shopify.
6. Add Compelling CTAs
Call-to-action (CTA) encourages the visitors to take your desired action, like clicking on pages, subscribing to mailing lists, or making a purchase. Through these actions, you will gain website engagement.
CTAs work best on pages with the most traffic, like the landing pages or the product pages. Use website analytics tools to understand which page on your website has the most traffic and add CTAs.
Additionally, consider an A/B test of your CTAs. Use different trigger words or add a sense of urgency for more effective results.
7. Create Different Content Types
Content boosts interest, but it can get boring. That’s why having different content types on the website provides variety that caters to visitors with different browsing behaviors.
To do it effectively, choose the content types suitable for your marketing strategies and attract the most engagement, like videos and interactive content. Alternatively, research the trending topics to find what content people prefer.
Go beyond the website and utilize your email and social media platforms. Redirecting the potential customers from social media and email lists to the website can also effectively increase website engagement.
8. Upload High-Quality Images
High-quality images improve the website aesthetics, provide a sense of trust and a better shopping experience. There are a few ways to use high-quality images on your website.
First, always go with high-resolution images. Either produce your own photos or use free stock photography.
Second, only use images that support your products, branding message, or landing pages.
Third, optimize the images by compressing their sizes, using the correct formats, and adding alt texts. Image optimization is also an on-page SEO strategy, which can increase your organic traffic.
9. Use Chatbots or Live Chat
Chatbot or live chat is an AI-based technology that the majority of the audience prefers. The primary use of this technology is to answer customer inquiries quickly, which effectively maintains the engagement and lowers the bounce rate.
Fortunately, chatbots or live chat platforms become more available as the demand increases. To choose the best one for your website, you’ll need to understand your needs for multichannel communication. Then, research different chatbot platforms for their price and features.
10. Perform Content Updates
Sometimes the best solution isn’t adding something new but maximizing the potential of the things you already have. This includes your content – you can upgrade it to boost engagement.
Updating content lets, you stay relevant on the search engines and ensures that your website meets the market demands.
To update your content, start by measuring the essential metrics. This includes web traffic, click-through rates (CTR), and lead generation.
Then, begin the content update by improving keywords, copy, and internal links. Additionally, offer something new to the readers by providing free product trials, subscription-only content, and downloadable digital products.
Conclusion
Increasing website engagement is much easier when you apply the ten expert tips covered in this article, which are a combination of improving your current resources and implementing new practices.
Each of these ten tips has one thing in common: being customer-focused and answering your audience’s needs.
Try practicing one or more of these expert tips and boost your website engagement. Good luck!