How do you know how well your website is doing? Whilst there are always slight fluctuations in engagement, when do you need to start worrying? If you are seeing a drop in the number of visitors is there a reason for this? For example, is it just a seasonal issue, or part of a larger problem with your site?
In the ever-changing landscape of digital marketing, nothing stays still for long. So our advice would be that if you are seeing a decline in visitors to your site, take action now rather than waiting any longer.
What is the worst that could happen? Even if the trend were somehow to reverse itself, taking steps to improve site engagement can only be a good thing, right?
Just to clarify what we mean by site engagement. We’re not just talking about the number of visits to your site, but the numbers of visitors who spend time browsing through your site. Engaging with it. Hopefully this means that there is content that they are enjoying and features with which they can interact with. Ideally this will lead to brand loyalty and higher conversions.
So here are ten things that we think you can do to boost site engagement:
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Know the facts
Let’s start at the beginning. We can’t say this often enough. You need to have a current accurate picture of where things are at in order to be able to improve them.
So that’s not just the number of visits to your site but a wide array of other measures, including:
- Sources of traffic
- Patterns of traffic (days/times/devices etc)
- Time spent on page
- Average session duration
- Typical user behaviour
- Most common exit page
- Bounce rate
- Returning visitors vs new visitors
- Conversion rate
Once you have some of the above data you can begin to understand what is and is not working well, and start to implement changes as needed.
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Page loading speed
According to Google, the ideal page load time is 3 seconds. In fact, if a page load time exceeds 10 seconds that has a 123% probability of increasing the bounce rate. But 70% of sites still take around 7 seconds to load, particularly on mobile devices.
So you need to use page speed tools to test your site, and do whatever you can to improve load speed and any related performance issues that are causing poor user experience. We will return to this topic in more detail in our next article How to improve page load speed.
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Sitemap / navigation
If visitors to your site cannot find the information they want within two or three clicks, they are likely to give up.
So you need to make sure that:
- You have a clear navigational structure and sitemap;
- You have a search box (that is easy to find!);
- Incoming links from search / email / social media go to the relevant landing page;
- You position additional links in helpful places (eg to click for further information at the end of a blog post).
Always make your navigation as simple and foolproof as possible. Never assume that visitors will be sufficiently committed to click through endless pages to find what they are looking for.
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Content quality
For all content – written or images or videos – ensure that it is of the highest quality so that visitors will not only want to engage with it but will also gain value from doing so.
Written content should be informative and motivating. It needs to be written in the right tone for your brand and for the subject matter concerned. Whether this is a formal or more conversational style is up to you, but it needs to be appropriate for your intended audience.
Also break written content into chunks, separated by subheadings, bullet points/numbered lists. Use white space and relevant images so that the user is not faced with a huge block of text to unravel.
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Social media promotion
What are you doing on social media to promote and drive traffic to your site? We all know that we need to do this but can become complacent and let our efforts tail off. We unwittingly start working in silos, happily updating our different channels without any cohesive message across them all.
So as well as deciding which social networks currently make the most sense for your company and keeping those up to date, remember that the main purpose is to use the social media post to direct visitors to your site.
Also ensure that the flow goes the other way too. For example when you blog on your website, try to include content that is current to your industry and if possible incorporate one or more trending hashtags. Encourage readers to share your posts with their friends on social media and help to promote your brand that way.
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Internal and external links
One way to boost site engagement is to try to build influencer marketing links. If there are influencers with successful blogs or a strong social media presence that are relevant to your business, then add outgoing links to them and – even better – see if there is any way you can get them to link back to you.
The same applies for other relevant businesses. High quality outgoing and – particularly – incoming links can boost your site engagement by association with these other brands.
Also work on your own internal link structure. Every page should offer interesting opportunities to go somewhere else on your site, over and above the main navigation bar. A good internal linking structure will help to boost your SEO ranking as well as enabling users to navigate your site easily: so it’s win-win.
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Responsive design
Mobile devices now account for half of global web traffic. In the UK, 82.2% of the population – 54 million people – now have smartphones. It is therefore vital that websites can display effectively on mobile devices as well as desktop.
So you need to ensure that you have a responsive website that will adapt to the device on which it is being used. Responsive web design uses HTML and CSS to do this by automatically resizing a website so that it looks good on whatever device is being used to access it: desktop, tablet or phone.
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Audience research
Another key way to boost site engagement is to do further research on the target audience you are trying to reach. This is worth doing to gain valuable insight as to what they do and do not like about your site, and what they are expecting.
Some ways of doing this research could be:
- A poll
- A short survey
- More in-depth interviews with willing participants
- Analysis of user interaction with your site, for example using heat maps
- Live chat transcripts
- Search box analysis
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Audience interaction
One easy way to boost your site engagement is to organise contests and giveaways. Most users love these. Examples include quizzes, polls, surveys, caption or photos contests, and interaction with chatbots.
You can offer prizes or rewards (eg discount vouchers) to those entering, which means that they will need to provide you with their contact details as part of the process. Ensure that you also ask for their consent for you to keep in touch with them for future contests and content updates.
You can advertise your contest or giveaway on social media, and ask your followers to do so as well – perhaps with some kind of bonus as a reward. Then create a relevant landing page on your website for the event, with lots of interesting links for users to follow once they have completed their entry.
Events such as contests and giveaways will almost certainly boost your site engagement, and should also gain you more followers and more positive interest in your brand.
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Reviews
Last but not least. Make sure you include online reviews on your site. People love reading about other people, and customers trust online reviews. It’s estimated that as many as 90% of online shoppers rely on positive reviews to help them make a final purchase decision.
One of the main reasons for this is that people trust reviews from real people more than marketing speak. They will gauge the product or service based on the overall consensus of the reviews, and indeed sometimes those reviews are the only source of information as to the experiences of others.
So make sure that you have mechanisms for collecting and publishing reviews. People enjoy reading them so they are an increasingly important factor in site engagement, as well as influencing potential customers to convert.
It’s also good to reply to reviews as this shows the human side of your business. Hopefully they will mostly be good reviews, and you can show your appreciation of your customers and keep their loyalty. But a lot can also be learned about a brand by the way they handle dissatisfied customers, so it is worth taking the time and effort to deal graciously with such situations. It signals to other potential customers that even if things go wrong from time to time, you can then be trusted to put them right.
So these are some of the ways that you can boost site engagement. We will explore the issue of page loading in our next article. Also remember to check back here regularly for more discussion about the key issues facing your digital marketing agency.