It can be a chore to drive traffic to your website. So, once you do gain a click through organic search, a referral or an ad, you need to you do what you can to keep them there long enough for them to dig in and see what you’ve got.
Below are a handful of tactics that can help visitors find what they are looking for, consume more content and enjoy a more engaged experience overall.
1. Click to
There are a variety of actions and associated tools related to helping people get or do what they want. Click to call, chat or schedule tools give people the ability to ask a quick question, ring you up to check stock, download a free session, or schedule an appointment without the need to pick up the phone. We use Olark for chat on your site and tools such Schedulicity and Genbook are worth a look for click to functionality.
2. Site search
Oftentimes someone tells a friend to go to your site to get what they want, but it’s not obvious when all they have is the home page. Adding search functionality to your site has become a fairly common and useful practice. You can use Google Custom Search or the WordPress search widget.
3. Video
The video format is a great way to increase engagement as you can entertain, surprise and build trust in ways that text rarely can. Using lots of short little videos on your site can be a great way to introduce core concepts, demonstrate how to use products and display client success stories. Adding functionality and calls to action to your video can make them even more engaging. Today’s post sponsor, Viewbix, has a great tool for that.
4. Related content
Once someone finds a piece of content on your site that offers information they are looking for it’s a great practice to use tools that can suggest additional related content. This is one of the best ways to keep people digging and clicking around your site. I’ve used the WordPress Contextual Related Content Plugin for some time and find it works well. It automatically places five related blog posts at the end of each post I write.
5. Smart content
Let’s say you sell big smelly diesel trucks as well as super green hybrid city delivery vehicles. Would it be safe to say that the prospective buyers of those two vehicles might be looking for very different things? Using technology like Getsmartcontent your site can display content based on a variety of factors, such as what someone typed into a search to find you site. Tailoring content to specific segments is a great way to increase engagement.
6. Guided tour
If your website caters to many needs it can be very engaging to present your visitors with options that lead them deeper and deeper into the precise information they are looking for. Using a tool like SurveyFunnel allows you to present your visitors with a series of questions and let the answers determine where they end up or what they subscribe to.
7. Advice and feedback
Asking for feedback and advice is not only a great way to increase engagement it’s a great way to learn how to get better. If someone comes to your site and doesn’t find what they are looking for wouldn’t it be great to understand what went wrong? Consider using a tool like 4Q, which offers up a little four-question survey to people leaving your site.
Measuring engagement
Once you employ a few tools it’s time to learn if you’ve improved engagement. Using Google Analytics Goals is a great way to see the impact. Analytics measures averages of many things, including time on site and page views per user. These two measures are a nice way to get a glimpse at engagement levels.
One way to track increases is to look at your current averages for these two metrics and create goals for each that are slightly above your current average. This will start to show increases, but it will also allow you to drill down and see where your increases are coming from – social, SEO or referral.
Increased engagement leads to increased awareness and trust and both of these can eventually lead to much greater conversion.
This post is sponsored by Viewbix – Easily add apps and calls to action to your video.
