Higher engagement is great for your website’s SEO, indicating to the search engines that your content is valuable to the users. This results in improved overall search rankings as well. Moreover, you have to ensure that the bounce rate is low, the session duration is high, and other engagement metrics showcase positive data!
And in an online world where attention is the main currency, you’re faced with the challenge of capturing audience attention while competing with thousands of other brands.
So, how do you ensure that your website keeps visitors engaged long enough to convert to prospective customers? This is what we’ll discuss in this post, so stay tuned!
When you’re targeting an online audience, you’ll have to play with certain psychological factors to draw them to your website. Here are a few important ones:
Reciprocation: All the good stuff for visitors shouldn’t be kept behind paywalls! Provide a few freebies, like a free demo, guides, etc. that the user can access without paying anything. This shows that you believe in giving value to the user!
So, you want to understand how engaging your website is? You’ll have to monitor these metrics to gain insights:
Bounce Rate: Did you ever open a website and leave immediately after viewing just a single page? If yes, then you’re counted under the bounce rate metric, which is the percentage of users who exited the site after viewing one page. If this metric is high, you’ll have to revamp your website to include more relevant details and better designs. It should also load fast!
Average Session Duration: This metric is based on how long a visitor stays on your website in a single visit. A higher average session duration indicates that your website is engaging and provides value to the user.
Pages Per Session: This metric is used to measure how many pages a visitor checks on your website in a single session. A lower number of pages per session means that the visitor didn’t find too many relevant details on your website, and that the internal linking is poor.
As a thumb rule, the Bounce Rate of your website should be Low, the Average Session Duration needs to be High, and the Pages Per Session metric should be High.
User experience on your website is crucial for you to have a high engagement on your website. Here are a few aspects to consider when you’re designing or managing your website:
You can also improve your website’s readability by contrasting the background color and the font color. This ensures that the messaging stands out. You can also align your website elements based on how users read, such as the F-pattern and Z-pattern. F-pattern is better for websites with more text, while Z-patterns suit websites with less text.
Make use of images as well. These are a great way to draw the user’s attention towards the elements that actively drive engagement and conversion!
Social media has changed the marketing game. If your brand isn’t on social media, its growth will be stunted.
So, ensure that you put user reviews from trusted sites or customer testimonial videos on your site to build your brand’s credibility and ensure that users trust your offerings. You can add certifications, number of downloads/purchases, mentions from prominent personalities, and case studies as well.
Oh, and did you know that 92% of customers hesitate to buy products online if there aren’t any customer reviews? Implement social proof into your website today so that your customer base doesn’t become a part of this statistic!
Interactive videos embedded on your website present a great opportunity for you to boost engagement. These videos can have gamified elements, such as quizzes and branching narratives, to enable the user’s active participation.
This way, your website’s average session duration increases, and you stand out against other brands by offering something novel. If possible, you can add an incentive for the game winners, such as a 5% discount on the product if they get all the answers correct in a quiz!
A key aspect of a user-friendly web design is personalization. This is often overlooked, and if you’re guilty of this, you’re missing out on maximizing your engagement potential.
Understand your target audience’s preferences based on their survey responses, purchase history, and other such data. Once you do, you’ll know exactly the type of content to put on your website to engage the audience.
You can provide different product recommendations, relevant blog posts, and customized dashboards to engage and entice the user. Another important element is an AI-powered chatbot that can deliver conversational and organic responses to the user’s queries.
Page speed is vital to ensuring visitors stay on your site. A slow site is frustrating to users and increases the bounce rate. Start optimizing the speed of your site by enabling browser caching, which saves portions of your site locally on visitors' devices for faster re-entries to the site. Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN) such as Cloudflare to serve content from a server located closest to the user. This server will be able to reach the user faster and, consequently, have a lower latency than a server located further from the user.
Utilize site resources such as TinyPNG, or WP Smush, to compress and optimize pictures for specific sizing to achieve even faster load times. Lean towards compromising between picture quality and compression, of course. Use lazy loading to postpone non-essential pictures and videos until they are more likely to be viewed in the viewport; lazy-loading can enhance (lower) the load times on your site. For enhancing the rendering speed of the site, consider minifying CSS, JavaScript, and HTML files to remove unnecessary spaces and comments, and remove any unused code:
Measure your page speed regularly using site-specific analysis tools, such as Google PageSpeed Insights, and continue improving your page speed iteratively over time. Faster load times not only improve visitor experience, but faster load times also impact visitor retention longer than a slow load time on your site.
CTAs that are customized for the user based on their behavior can direct the user towards actions you want them to take without being overly forceful. By changing the CTA using user history, or their position in the sales funnel, the CTA becomes more personalized, relevant to users, which heightens click-through rate.
Exit-intent popups intercept the user before the user will leave the website and offer a relevant offer or lead capture form, so that the visitor may stay longer or convert. If you use exit-intent pop-ups properly, you can reduce bounce rates without an unpleasant experience to the user.
Properly organized content has better readability, which leads to visitors becoming engaged. Use easily-read descriptive headings and subheadings to logically break up sections. Using bullet points and numbered lists can help make text areas easier to read and scan.
Multimedia areas should be used, such as images, infographics, and video content. These will influence and engage the reader and offer more than just the textual experience. Additionally, try to keep paragraphs short and to use simple vocabulary that is understandable to lessen cognitive load. Once there is increased readability, users will likely venture to more pages, increasing time spent on the site.
Guide visitors down the rabbit hole of your site through relevant internal links naturally inserted into your content. Linking to related articles, product pages, or other useful resources keeps visitors browsing.
Good internal linking helps your SEO with page authority, and also helps user experience by providing smooth navigation paths to information. Audit and update links from time to time to ensure relevance and functionality.
Add gamified features such as quizzes, challenges, competitions, or reward points. These types of features will increase interaction and incentivize engagement with your site. Gamification can lead to visitors exploring sites longer, engaging actively, and returning to sites again.
Gamified elements leverage human psychology and make the role of browsing a fun and memorable experience, which can aid in decreasing bounce rates and promote brand loyalty.
Providing immediate contact options like live chat or an AI chatbot will give visitors instant assistance and tailored support. The result is a quick solution to visitor questions or concerns, thus lessening the barriers to conversion as well as improving satisfaction.
Chatbots for example can engage 24/7 and take care of answering standard questions. In doing this, human agents have more bandwidth to manage their interactions around complex issues and concerns. Having real-time support will also help encourage visitors to remain longer and navigate throughout the site.
You can use heatmaps, session recording and analytics software to truly understand user behaviors in detail. Understanding where your visitors click, scroll or stop, identify opportunities for improvements.
Try A/B testing multiple pages items such as headings, layouts, CTAs or colors to find the best blend for keeping visitors engaged and taking action. Implementing a data-centric approach to continually inform refinement will help drive improved engagement metrics over time.
To sustain visitor interest and brand affinity, provide a smooth user experience across multiple web, mobile, email, and social media channels. Consistent messaging and a seamless handoff between touchpoints support a cohesive customer journey.
Utilize engagement tactics across various modalities, such as personalized emails sent to users after they visit the website or placing ads on social media to retarget previous website visitors, to offer equity and continued engagement for visitors beyond their immediate session on the site.
The idea with CTAs is simple: keep it short and showcase the value proposition right away. The last thing a user wants to see is a generic CTA, and these are pretty bad at convincing them for conversions.
Let’s take an example.
CTA 1 is “Try the Demo”, and CTA 2 is “Get Your Free Demo Here”.
Which one are you more likely to click? Most of us would answer CTA 2. That’s because the value proposition (Free) is clearly visible, while it’s unclear in CTA 1.
Another trick is to use FOMO, and provide CTAs for limited-time offers or rewards. This creates a sense of urgency for the user, and they’re not willing to miss out on deals.
Of course, you’ll have to brainstorm for relevant CTAs. However, it’ll help immensely in driving sales!
Exit-intent, in simple words, is when the user is about to leave; they showcase the intention to exit the website. So, you can use exit-intent strategies to change their mind and engage them further.
For example, imagine that you’re browsing YouTube and about to exit the video you’re watching. However, when you pause the video, a recommendation pops up that grabs your interest. That’s when you switch to the new video and remain on the YouTube website. This is a form of exit-intent strategy.
To implement this strategy on your website, you can introduce gamification elements. For example, a quiz or poll pops up in the middle of a webpage. This allows the user to engage with the website for longer.
Another great tactic is to redirect them to freebies like guides, PDFs, etc., which are essentially lead magnets. If they choose to sign up, they get these items, and possibly even discounts!
Regardless of what you do, you’ll still have to ensure that your website’s design is functional, fast-loading, and attractive. Otherwise, exit-intent strategies will be less effective.
So, if you want to keep visitors on your website, you’ll have to understand the psychology behind the user, play to their preferences, and optimize your website’s user experience. You can then add social proof, lead magnets, and interactive content to keep their attention.
Out of these, we’d highly recommend interactive videos for engagement. In fact, 93% of consumers believe that interactive videos educate them more about your product than regular, static videos.
So, if you want to start with interactive content, consider Life Inside. Our interactive video platform and dedicated in-house content team can help you collect and create interactive videos, activate them, and automate their distribution on your websites from day one!
Sign up on Life Inside today to experience the maximum engagement potential of your website!
Your website may either be badly structured, load slowly, or not present relevant information quickly enough. Considering auditing the website’s user experience and design to understand the underlying causes.
You can add interactive elements like quizzes, polls, and spinning wheels. However, we’d recommend interactive videos as the best option!
Social proof gives new visitors the confidence to purchase your product or services. Customers often relate the most with other customers instead of brands. If they notice that other customers have had a positive experience with your brand, it adds to the brand’s credibility and trust.
Videos, especially interactive videos, engage the visitor for longer periods as they actively participate in the video’s narrative. This means that visitors stay longer on your website and are less likely to exit after just the first page.
A low bounce rate, high average session duration, and high number of pages per session indicate that your website’s engagement rate is positive.