5 Ways to Boost Website Engagement

If you want to have a successful online business, you have to track website engagement. It shows all the steps that a person makes while browsing a website. In other words, it will tell you where the person entered the site, how long they stayed on the page, whether or not they visited other pages, etc.

By analyzing website engagement, you can determine all the steps a visitor takes when making a purchase. More importantly, it helps you establish why people don’t buy on your site. For example, if people tend to bounce from a certain page, this is a clear indication something is wrong with it. In this article, we will share 5 ways to boost website engagement and thus, increase your sales.

1. Make It More Visually Appealing

Nowadays, people are attacked from all sides with marketing messages. Almost every online page has the ultimate goal of selling a product or a service. This is why it is so important for your site to be visually appealing.

If a person sees your website for the first time, they will subconsciously decide whether to trust you or not. A lot of it has to do with the presentation. Your website needs to be clean, with a nice structure and design.

People are especially reluctant to buy from stores they visit for the first time. If they spent the whole day browsing, there is a good chance they’ve seen several other web stores aside from yours. According to this merchandising guide, most people are willing to do extra research to find just the item they need.

2. Think About the Website Speed

In the last few years, Google and other search engines have placed extra emphasis on website speed. Nowadays, it is hard for a website to rank among the top 5 results if its pages open slowly.

Google wants to provide its users with the best experience possible. And the data shows how important this factor is to users: one second slower loading speed increases bounce rate by 56%. As mentioned in the previous bullet point, people have a very short attention span, and website owners need to adapt.

The best way to address the issue and make your pages faster is by removing the unnecessary elements. One of the common mistakes people make is putting too many high-resolution images. So, by limiting their number, you can improve optimization and reduce bounce rate.

3. The Website Has to be Mobile-friendly

Nowadays, there are more people who access the web via their phones than you have desktop users. Unfortunately, many websites did not adapt to this trend, and as a result, they suffered low engagement and bad search engine performance.

According to data, having a responsive website can decrease the overall bounce rate by 80%. Furthermore, it can also increase the number of new users by 120%. But what’s even more important, it will increase your sales.

A website owner needs to change button sizes according to the size of an average mobile screen. Also, elements in the mobile view need to be simpler compared to their desktop counterparts.

4. Consider Content Presentation

When talking about engagement, formatting is the most important aspect of the content. How you present information is sometimes more important than the information itself.

Your articles and product pages need to have a nice structure. Paragraphs should be small but not too small (ideally, each one should have three lines of text). Similarly, every sentence should be up to 20 words long.

Whenever you can, use bullets and numbering as a way of breaking the text. Images can also work well, but as we previously mentioned, you don’t want to exaggerate with them. When necessary, you can link to reputable outside resources, thus increasing your own authority.

5. Linking Your Pages

Interlinking is one of the best ways to increase website engagement. Basically, you should direct visitors to other important pages on your website so that they remain for as long as possible.

Website owners need to revise what their goals are when linking to pages. Connecting them just for the sake of linking will not necessarily yield desired results. However, if you can connect relevant articles or send people to your product pages, you can significantly increase responsiveness.

It is important to create a logical structure. As an owner, you need to guide the visitors so they can learn more about a particular topic or search for similar products. Among others, this is also crucial for search engine optimization.