The cold, hard truth about your website traffic is that most of the people who visit for the first time won’t come back. So how do you keep those website visitors engaged with your content and produce a great user experience?
Here are a few website engagement tips to get new visitors better involved with your website and improve your conversion rate optimization.
1. Keep Your Promises
If your headlines promise to provide information on a certain topic—make sure you deliver on that promise. There is nothing quite as frustrating as a “click-bait” headline that causes a visitor to click, only to find that they’ve been duped into visiting a page with content they care nothing about.
Always be transparent and consistent with the purpose of your website. Use catchy headlines with informative content and your website visitors will be engaged, read longer and convert more.
2. Call to Action
Do your web pages have a clear call to action? You can’t expect your website visitors to know what you want them to do unless you ask. Do you want them to download a piece of content? Register for a webinar?
By making your request clear in a simple, well-placed call to action, your audience will know what you want and be more likely to do it. There is very little room for ambiguity in web marketing.
Examine some great CTA examples from HubSpot that can help generate that click.
3. Easy on the Text
We’ve all visited a web page with page after page of text. It’s almost impossible to digest that much content by scrolling through endless blocks of heavy text.
Instead of throwing thousands of words at your web visitors, create small bursts of clickable content that allow your audience to drill down into targeted sub-topics.
Use infographics. Include images. When you do need to provide lengthier content, try to break it up into bulleted or numbered lists for easier consumption.
4. Say Thank You
When you get a new subscriber or someone downloads a piece of content from your website, a well-planned thank you email can go a long way toward converting them to a true follower.
Offer a supplemental piece of content or link to some other resource on your website to create additional value and build a rapport with the reader.
5. Paint a Picture
We’ve already talked about minimizing the quantity of text on your web pages. To take it a step further: don’t forget about video. Anytime you can make a visual connection with your reader, they are more likely to remember you, your products and services and what you have to say.
Consider a video blog instead of a written blog post. Add some customer testimonials. There are lots of creative ways to draw your visitors in and make them stay on your page to see what new content you’ll come up with next.
6. Prevent the Exit
Exit detection prompts are often the last defense against website abandonment. By utilizing a prompt before your website visitors leave your page, you are more likely to keep them engaged, help them find the information they are looking for and possibly even convert them to customers.
7. Make it Simple
When you build new web pages, you need to test, test and test some more. Make sure all of your links work and those that should open in a new window, do. Check each page to see how quickly it takes to load. Nothing will make a website visitor abandon ship faster than a page that takes too long to load.
Over to you
By keeping your reader in mind as you build and refine your website, you’ll retain more traffic and gain more subscribers. Check site traffic stats, make adjustments and design with the end goal of helping your readers. The results will follow.