As a business living in this modern world, you probably have a website. But is your website engaging? Is it working for you as a sales-building tool, or simply standing by as an online presence for your company? Improving your web engagement could be the key to making you more sales every day.
What is an Engaging Website?
An engaging website keeps people interested. It makes visitors stay instead of closing the browser window. Maybe it’s the satisfying colors, the smooth design flow, the quality content, or another factor. Regardless, an engaging website successfully holds a visitor’s attention.
Why Have an Engaging Website?
The longer a visitor stays on your site, the more engaged they are with your company and the more likely they are to purchase from you.
Think of your website as a representative for your company. Some may visit your website several times before ever speaking to a live person from your company. Does your website give consumers a great first impression? Does it engage with them, keep them interested, and answer their questions? Or does your website fall flat, lack direction, and leave them with more questions?
Your website is a valuable business tool with the potential to produce monetary results. Make it engaging and it will work for you, not against you.
Measuring Engagement
How do you know if your website is engaging? While measuring how long a visitor stays on your site is a good indicator, there are a few specific types of engagement opportunities every website can implement and measure.
- Content Consumption: This is straightforward. How much time does a visitor spend on each page? Do they click on other blogs or parts of your site, or stay on one page? Do they watch any videos, click on any links?
- Contact: Are they interested enough after viewing your website to send you a message or fill out your connect form?
- Download: Do you have any downloads for visitors? This may be a lead magnet, a summary of your services, a helpful industry-specific document, or any other valuable piece of content you can package into a download.
- Registration: Does your business host webinars, run events, or any other kind of attraction a visitor would need to register to attend?
If you have any of these engagement opportunities on your website now, use them to track whether visitors are engaging with your site or not. Next, let’s look at how you can improve your engagement.
Improving Your Engagement
What makes a website engaging? Think intrigue, excitement, and a clear direction. Remember, your website is an embodiment of your company’s identity. Every word, color, and section should represent who you are and invite others to join you on your mission.
Here are 5 simple ways you can make your website more engaging today.
#1: Great Content
This first one is simple but valuable: share great content. Great content is relevant, high quality, and fresh.
Create content relevant to your industry: Address problems your customers may have, how you are the solution, industry news or trends, and so on.
Share content that is high quality: There are a ton of voices on the internet today. Everyone is talking over each other, begging for more attention, more views, more likes. What makes you stand out? What makes your content better than all of the other voices? Is it the value you share, a new spin, the quality of your solution?
Keep your content fresh: Don’t share old content. The internet moves fast today. Any blogs or videos you have on your website should be future-focused. Aim to be a step ahead of the world. Refresh and update your website frequently to avoid becoming old news.
#2: Visually Pleasing
Consumers today have visited enough websites to recognize a standard template when they see one. While these templates are affordable and help you get your website up quickly, they do not help you stand out. Ask yourself these questions to improve your website’s physical design:
- Do your brand colors flow seamlessly throughout your site, or were they added as an afterthought?
- Is your website unique?
- Are your website’s colors and visual design in line with your brand identity?
- For example: if your company is minimalist, keep your colors and designs simple, for a creative and bold company, your design can be busier and bold.
- Does your website have a good balance of words, headlines, photos, graphics, and videos?
- Not every website needs every one of these elements, but it’s good to have variation. Unless it is a specific statement to your brand’s identity (i.e. as a photographer your design may be heavy on the photos) don’t design your site with only one of these elements.
- Do your fonts flow well together or clash with each other?
#3: Clear Direction and Organization
Why does your website exist? Do you have it just to check a box as a company? Or does your site have a clear plan for each visitor? It can be easy to throw up some colors, a nice design, information about your business, click “Publish” and walk away.
Take your website to the next level by creating a clear direction for each visitor. Ask yourself: what is the end goal for every visitor? Do you want them to make a purchase, sign up for a newsletter, contact a representative? Whatever that goal is — and maybe you have a few directions you could lead them — curate your website content to that end.
#4: Great SEO
Another filter you should push your content through before publishing is SEO, or Search Engine Optimization. Choosing the right keywords to center content or copy around is a valuable step in creating an engaging website. This may be the headlines and content within your blogs or the words you use in your static copy or landing page.
After all, if the right people find you through a Google search, they are more likely to stay online and make a purchase. On the other hand, if your content is sending Google the wrong messages about who you are, the visitors that come won’t engage with you because they aren’t your target audience to begin with.
#5: User Experience
Your user experience is a package of elements, which is why we saved this one for last. User Experience, or UX, refers to a combination of how everything on your site — your design, content, organization, etc. — contributes to the overall experience a visitor has when they come to your site. Whichever step you take first to improve your website’s engagement, always be asking how it will improve your user experience.
Make Your Website Work for You
Never underestimate the power of a great website. Instead of viewing your site as a chore to complete, start seeing it as the exciting revenue-building machine it can be. Your website can carry the conversation with a visitor from introduction to closing a sale.
Making improvements will take some time and regular upkeep. But once you’ve put in the work, you can sit back and reap the reward of an engaging website that consistently grows your following and your sales every day.
