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Website engagement cannot be overlooked as customer experience is the deciding factor in terms of brand loyalty in today’s digital ecosystem. Businesses are focused on using their websites as a source of engaging with their customers and lead generation.
47% of B2B buyers reported that the most likely way they find sales information was to go directly to a website.
Having an appealing web design is the key to increase website engagement, but along with that, there are many other factors that are important for site conversion optimization.
What are those factors and how do they influence your visitors’ journey or behavior? Let us discuss the meaning of website engagement strategy and the different aspects that can help to improve website engagement.
What exactly is website engagement?
Website engagement is defined as how well a brand is able to delight and retain the mindshare of the customers or users. It is about whether your users are finding any value by measuring certain activities such as downloads, clicks, shares, and more.
It has much to do with constructively engaging the user’s time through experiences at multiple touchpoints for their benefit. The higher is the website engagement, the customers are likely to become more loyal.
Why increasing website engagement is important?
Before we talk about website user engagement, just answer a few questions. How much time are visitors spending on your website? What pages are they checking out? Are your calls-to-action (CTAs) attracting them?
The answers determine how engaging your website is and the benefits it can bring to your business. The idea behind measuring your website engagement metrics is to understand how your users and visitors are performing the desired actions.
By measuring the right website metrics, you can also evaluate how your visitor’s experience is. The key areas where businesses experience significant rise are as follows:
- Increase sales conversions – Users spend more time when the website is engaging. They might not spend on the first visit but eventually, increase conversions.
- Higher customer satisfaction – A well-designed website engages the visitors and encourages them to visit the different pages and options boosting their satisfaction level.
- Average duration on the website – It is obvious that when your website is appealing, users will spend more time visiting the pages and menus.
15 Innovative ideas to improve website engagement strategy
It is vital to maintain a healthy relationship with your website visitors and make them visit again and again.
Here is the list of most important website engagement ideas that can help you to convert website visitors into customers.
- Add live chat for real-time assistance
- Automate your website engagement with AI bots
- Provide live assistance with co-browsing & video chat
- Make your messaging crystal clear
- Highlight your social proof
- Make your Call to Action (CTAs) compelling
- Personalize your communication to increase user engagement
- Make your website mobile responsive
- Make your website loading time faster
- Run contests as a lead magnet
- Incentivize with offers & discounts
- Make your brand messaging clear
- Make your website customer experience-centric
- Segment your visitors for targeted communication
- Keep your website navigation intuitive
- Understand your target audience
Let us comprehensively discuss the website engagement strategies.
1. Add live chat for real time assistance
Have you ever thought about what frustrates visitors coming to your website?
Obviously, a long wait time to get answers.
Long response time is one of the key reasons for a bad customer experience. 59% of customers are more likely to buy when brands answer their queries in under a minute.
Source: Hotjar
The impact of long queue time can be significantly reduced by implementing live chat. It helps you to engage website visitors in real time when they land on your site and what they expect. There is no better website engagement tool to offer instant assistance to your visitors and customers.
Companies offering live chat report 34% improvement in customer satisfaction rates and 2.6x improvement in customer care costs.
Here is how to increase website engagement with live chat.
- You can set up automated and customized welcome messages that start a chat with visitors.
- Live chat is much faster than reactive channels like email or phone. Thus, guides visitors in the right direction through proactive conversations.
- Having live chat on the website boost sales conversion rate.
- Live chat analytics provide valuable insights about visitors’ journeys and previous touchpoints.
- Live chat increases website conversion by handling multiple chats that reduce queue time.
- It drives customer satisfaction and converts visitors to loyal customers who retain your brand as well as advocates with positive word of mouth.
2. Automate your website engagement with AI bots
Chatbots are drastically changing the way brands are interacting and engage with their customers. They are considered to be the best conversational tool that delivers convenience, personalization, and decision support when your support team is on the go. 35% of customers want to see more companies using chatbots.
Bots are 24×7 active and engage customers during peak hours or when your support is not available. They instantly answer simple queries and reduce the number of support tickets.
Such powerful are bots that many industries leverage them in one way or another to drive engagement and boost leads. Many car makers use AI bots to bolster lead generation in automotive industry.
Here are some reasons how chatbots prove to be great website engagement techniques.
- Immediate response – AI chatbots engage visitors’ proactivity as well as provide instant answers to deliver a better customer experience.
- Personalized support – Deliver personalized support to the site visitors by analyzing their previous journey.
- Scalability – Chatbots can be scaled easily when there is a high volume of chats without any need for additional resources.
- Handle FAQs – Chatbot solution can be the best suited if your maximum customer queries are basic. Bots engage customers with instant answers to all the basic FAQs.
3. Provide live assistance with co-browsing & video chat
Companies that empower their support team with live customer engagement tools develop personal relationships with them. With video chat and co-browsing solutions, the support team can simplify the complex form fill process through personalized face-to-face conversations and provide a virtual in-person experience.
The live engagement tools make the conversation interactive and effective. For communicating technical concepts, complex processes – video chat and co-browsing are the best.
So how to increase user engagement on a website with visual interaction tools?
- Resolve issues faster – When agents view the customer screen, they gain first-hand knowledge of the issues that can be identified and resolved much faster than phone calls or chat and improved first contact resolution.
- Streamlined real-time support – Live interactions have the strongest impact on customer satisfaction. With co-browsing, customers can experience real-time live support and get issues resolved instantly.
- Enhanced customer experience – With instant response and personalized guidance, customers’ frustration settles faster and strengthens customer relationships.
4. Make your messaging crystal clear
Every web page has a purpose, be it products, services, prices, or blog pages. The main objective while designing any page is to know the perfect ways how to start a blog and to make the core messaging obvious to the visitor.
Suppose, if a visitor comes to your product page, your core products must be positioned in such a way that it clearly conveys the message that your business wants. The intent of the visitor and the messaging of the web page should be matching to each other.
Keeping the messaging clear helps your business to engage visitors in the right way. Here are a few tips you can follow:
- Communicate what your brand does – Your main message has to clearly state what service(s) or product(s) your company sells.
- Ensure to include value proposition – Your main messaging must also tell users how what you do or what you sell can positively impact their lives.
- Keep the main focus on the user – When you want to communicate both your brand’s purpose and your value, but the trick is to do so in a way that focuses on the user’s needs.
- Appeal your audience – Your main messaging should focus on appealing to people who either already are interested in your services, or are likely to become interested in them in the future.
5. Highlight your social proof to improve website engagement
The very first thing you do when you land on any website is looking for the stats or check out social proof.
70% of people said they trust consumer opinions posted online, eCommerce sites are wise to use social proof to increase buyer confidence.
Social proof can be in the form of testimonials, reviews, star ratings, and real-time statistics. Businesses can help increase conversions by validating the buyer’s decision, which is why it’s essential to incorporate it into your marketing strategy. In the long run, it helps in building brand credibility.
Source: Hubspot
How can social proof be one of the great website engagement ideas?
- Customer reviews help buyers in their purchase decisions and develop trust for your company.
- Using social proof in your marketing strategy is vital to helping your business increase its sales.
6. Make your Call to Action (CTAs) compelling
Have you ever come across a “Join Now” or “Add to Your Shopping Cart” button?
I am quite sure that you have seen it. These are calls to action or CTAs that act as prompts for your visitors to do specific tasks.
The orange button in the image below represents a clickable CTA.
CTAs should be prudently used across the website to boost customer engagement. You can direct your visitors to comment on your articles, ask them to subscribe to your email list. You can also ask them to connect with you via social media.
The key to making your CTAs stand out is using the right language according to situations and consider their placement carefully. The business profits and revenue greatly depend on judiciously using CTAs.
How can an effective call to action boost your conversions by being a website engagement tool?
- Color matter a lot so stand out with contrasting colors
- Make sure about the shape and size of the button. It should be able to draw the attention of the visitor instantly.
- In order to grab the attention of the user tailor CTA copy with unique words.
- Include the element of value proposition in the call-to-action button
For e.g., incorporating value proposition elements like ‘Free Guide’, ‘Save up to 25%’ in a call to action button clearly explains to the visitor what they are going to get in return for their action.
7. Personalize your communication to increase website engagement
Today’s consumers expect businesses to understand their needs and provide relevant and desirable information, products, services, and solutions. They would rather cut off from a business that doesn’t make the effort to communicate in a meaningful and pleasing way.
Smart brands know that the more personalized they can make their messaging, the more likely a customer is to respond to it. By harnessing the power of data analytics, your brand can create a detailed plan for customer-focused marketing messages.
Forbes Agency Council shows how their companies are using data to make customer communications more personalized.
- Get interactive – You can use interactive tools on our website to provide us with data about our visitors. This data gives us insight into what our audiences are most interested in, and that drives our content strategy.
- Listen to your audience – You need to determine the objectives, the asset to be optimized to accomplish. Then create content that resonates with your audience. At times, the user-generated content is more effective.
- Automate your marketing – Marketing automation ensures that the visitor sees the right content at the right time by using automation tools such as best AI bots and augmented reality (AR).
Also, engaging content helps increase website engagement. So, write engaging content so you can get the most out of your web content.
8. Make your website mobile responsive
Mobile devices have become such a regular part of everyday life that we all see our phones once we leave the house. Mobile users accounted for a whopping 56% of website traffic.
For website owners, such a shift in how people interact with the web is quite normal. But it increases the urgency you need to have in making your website mobile responsive. If your mobile visitors don’t have a good experience when they land on your website, you are possibly driving away from a huge portion of your potential traffic.
Here are some steps to ensure that your website appeases your mobile as well as desktop users:
- A responsive website includes the same content and information on mobile devices you access.
- Make sure that the information users are looking for is easier to find when they land on your website.
- You need to ensure that the button sizes are designed to work on the mobile should be good enough.
- At times, mobile users prefer to see the desktop version of your website so allow an easy way to switch to desktop view.
- It is better to use larger font sizes as it makes reading easy on the smaller screen.
9. Make your website loading time faster
One of the common challenges faced by users is the website loading time. Your web pages should load instantly for visitors if you wish them to hand on to your website and smartly engage them with different web elements.
It helps to enhance web engagement and boost customer satisfaction.
A single second of delay can cause conversion rates to drop by 7%. It clearly means that even the least wait time in website loading can negatively impact user engagement and conversions.
How can you fix it?
Google Analytics offers speed suggestions under the heading speed of the website. There are tools like GTMetrix that can be used to get website speed suggestions if your site happens to load slowly.
10. Run contests as a lead magnet
Everyone likes gifts and winning quizzes or contests.
Well planned and executed contests/giveaways bring a good boost to your website traffic while the prizes are up grabbed by the winners. Continuous web visitors will be motivated to join, and you can also notice an increase in the customer base.
Before you start a contest, here is a quick action plan to run a successful contest that can improve website engagement strategy:
- Be sure about the purpose of your contest like for driving web traffic, social engagement,, and so on.
- Choose the best time to run the contest – Christmas, Easter, etc.
- Know where and how to promote your contest.
- Make your contest announcement ready with content and images.
- Promote your giveaways on a regular basis.
11. Incentivize with offers & discounts
Offering coupons, deals, and discounts are the most prominent ways of promotion.
Discounts and coupons came in as the top-ranking tactic for driving loyalty with 61% of consumers saying they use them.
How discounts & offers can increase website engagement?
Discount in the form of coupons not only impacts your overall sales but also helps to create the buzz around the brand in the long term. Thus it is recommended that a business should opt for various interesting ways to offer discounts and attract more and more customers.
You can consider making a repeat purchase with the help of a discount, as True Citrus does in this post-purchase thank you email.
Key suggestions to improve the coupons and discounts positioning to increase engagement on your website:
- Loyalty reward programs and bonus discount offers to improve customer loyalty as well as retention.
- Provide coupon offers to your customers for sharing their reviews and stories
- You can offer coupons – discount offers exclusively for newsletter sign-ups and for email alerts.
- Offering discounts on the next purchase is also a good way to incentivize your customers.
12. Make your brand messaging clear
Brand messaging is all about what your brand promises. Whether building a brand from the beginning or revamping an existing brand, select the right messaging that will resonate with your audiences, from their point of view.
A website engagement strategy that is infused with your brand’s messaging can:
- Increase visibility for your business among the right audience.
- Enhance your thought leadership profile and your position as an industry expert.
- Bolster your lead generation.
If your core message is not clear visitors will be confused and ultimately decline. So it is very important to know your target audience and set messaging accordingly.
Brand messaging should always be specific to articulate benefits, not features. And to connect to the audiences you are targeting, in their words, from their perspective.
13. Make your website customer experience-centric
When you create a good experience, that is consistent and predictable, then you have the right shot at improving customer retention.
Everything you do impacts your customers’ perception and their decision to return back to your website. Great website experience comprises each and every interaction that a customer has with your business, from website navigation, customer service interaction to the final purchase of products or services.
Thus, an engaging website is a key to customer success. Below are some benefits of the same.
- Boost customer satisfaction
- Convert first-time visitors to loyal customers
- Drives customer advocacy
- Gives your brand a competitive edge
- Builds trust in customers
When a customer was late in returning a pair of shoes due to a death in the family, the Zappos’ customer service team went a step ahead to take care of return shipping and arranged a courier to pick up for free. They also send flowers with a condolence note.
Businesses that use emotional connections outperform their competitors by 85% in sales.
Here are some best practices to follow:
- Always listen to your customers to discover their needs, challenges, and pain points.
- Keep your customer service as human as possible, whether you do it online or in person.
- Connect with your customers emotionally to win customer loyalty.
14. Segment your visitors for targeted communication
When it comes to marketing, if you are trying to connect with a broader audience, you are going to have a difficult time reaching anybody. Segmenting visitors helps to increase website engagement.
With the targeted marketing strategy, you can break down a large market into smaller segments to concentrate on a specific group of customers within that audience. It defines a segment of customers based on their unique characteristics and focuses solely on serving them.
How with the help of different types of segmentation you can make website engagement better and appeal to the senses of your target audience?
- Showcase the products or services geared towards a particular age group or locality, can help create buzz on your homepage and push existing & first-time visitors into your sales funnel.
- You can recommend products to a visitor based on their on-site behavior and past browsing history on the homepage itself can prove to be significantly beneficial for your business.
- You can match your products as per your customer needs. You can understand your target audience’s actions or conducts to move ahead and pitch products that would most interest them.
15. Keep your website navigation intuitive
On landing any website we expect to navigate with ease but unfortunately, not every site is designed as well as it should be. Great navigation is one of the most important aspects of designing a website. It acts as one of the best website engagement tools.
Designing your website navigation is like laying the foundation for your house. Failure to plan your foundation properly could put your building at risk of collapse, regardless of how nice it looks.
If you want to increase website engagement, you need to spend time planning how your audience will interact with your content, and figure out the most intuitive ways of organizing, and representing it.
How interactive websites can increase engagement?
- Connect with customers in meaningful ways – Customers today expect a website to have interactive self-service components. This helps answer questions and guide their decisions.
- Boost sales conversion rates – Intuitive website design engages your customers very soon and builds trust & interest in your brand. It means less bounce rate and they are likely to come back again.
- Enhance personalization – Closely monitor what people are clicking, when, where, and how. Use the data to know more about your customers. Apply the same to create a better overall website experience and even more customized experience for each visitor.
16. Understand your target audience
Capturing insights into the preferences of your audience can be one of the great website engagement ideas. By conducting a survey, you can create content that your target group can truly engage with. Asking questions about what they like and what they expect from you.
The answers and feedback from them will show where you need improvement for better website user engagement.
Protip: Whatever your survey is about, make sure you keep questions short and simple. Avoid taking too much of your visitors’ time with lengthy surveys.
Here are some other ways to get to know your audience better.
- Interviews as a part of qualitative research – It is like talking to your audience and developing reports on how they interact with your brand.
- Go through the recorded chats – Going through the recorded voice and video customer service calls, to identify the problem areas. It is an easy way to listen between the lines and find out what they are looking for.
Key website engagement metrics & KPIs
Website engagement metrics and KPIs measure what users are actually doing on your website. Having in-depth insight into what drives user engagement helps the business to understand their customer better and helps them make informed decisions.
Here are some of the most common (and most important) website engagement metrics and KPIs.
- Number of engagements – It is an important metric to measure the number of visitors being engaged out of the total number of visitors. Suppose, your website has 10,000 visitors per day out of which only 25% i.e. 2500 visitors are engaged in some way or the other. It means the number of engagements was 2500 visitors.
- Number of leads – This lead generation KPI helps to find out the exact number of website visitors converted as customers. It means the visitors who make sales, out of the total number of visitors on your website.
- Time on page – It helps you to determine the quality of your website traffic. It is a key indicator that your targeting strategies are not doing well and need to be adjusted.
- Pages per session – It offers more information about a visitor’s actual interaction with the site. It conveys the amount of time a user spent on any given page.
- Pageviews – Measuring page views can help you to understand how often people visit your website.
- New vs. returning visitors – The more number of returning visitors indicates a bigger group of engaged customers to build a strong relationship.
Great website engagement has a direct impact on business
Every business is targeted and optimized for the end-user or a customer to whom they are selling their products or services. Hence, website engagement is the ultimate context in developing a brand or a business in the marketplace.
Good website engagement not only helps to sell products or services, but it also makes your customers loyal and stay with you for a long time. Increased engagement always impacts sales and increases brand awareness that eventually leads to higher conversion.
