How to design your website to increase audience engagement?

web design agency

Website user engagement is a key factor in determining your website’s performance and rating. Every website competes with competitor companies to enhance its levels of audience engagement. Even if you receive a large quantity of traffic, it won’t mean much unless you can engage visitors and persuade them to do the needed action.

As we know that, the initial stage in the conversion process is to engage users. Before you can persuade your audience to buy or subscribe, you must first engage them. Furthermore, having people abandon your website in a few seconds will have a negative influence on your bounce rate. So, if website user engagement is so weak, how can it be improved? In this article, I’ll go through ten working strategies for engaging visitors successfully.

1. Page load time should be reduced.

You’ve undoubtedly had your own experience with slow-loading pages. You come across a website that seems intriguing, click on the link, and then wait for it to load. You probably leave the website since it’s infuriating to wait and wait. According to SOASTA research, sites that load one second slower might see a 56 percent rise in bounce rate. This is bad news for website user engagement.

Perform a page speed test with free tools like Pingdom to determine if your site loads in less than two seconds. If not, take efforts to enhance page load speed by deleting unneeded components (images, videos, or javascript). Photos can be interesting, but try to keep the number of images of each article to a minimum so that the website loads quickly. You might also install plugins that would enable lazy loading, through this the images will load only when the readers navigate to the particular section. Hiring a dedicated web design agency will help you to implement this ASAP.

2. Improve the structure of your internal links.

A good internal linking structure will help people to go deep inside your site smoothly, in addition to improving your SEO ranking. Then you’ll be able to produce more page views per visitor while decreasing the bounce rate. Both are required for user engagement on a website. Use appropriate anchor texts to connect to other similar information on your website.

Read Also: How a website redesign is essential for you?

The anchor text for links should be descriptive, detailed, and hyper-relevant. This may also be used to increase website user engagement. However, avoid overusing the internal linking approach because it may irritate users (and search engines) if used excessively in an article.

If you have a particularly relevant piece of material to highlight, provide “Read Also/Recommended for You” links in the middle of the post.

3. Show related content

Internal linking is comparable to this website user engagement advice. Simply show relevant posts at the bottom of each page. This makes it easier for readers to access similar topics if they need additional information about the topic they were reading about first.

While you may do this manually, plug-ins that automatically insert snippets for more articles or pages at the conclusion of your content can help you save time. It allows you to show these postings as a thumbnail or as a text link.

4. Simplify your navigation.

What if a large number of your website visitors depart because they can’t locate what they’re looking for?

Many websites are very complex to browse, resulting in a high bounce rate and little user engagement. Simplify and reorganize your navigation system so that people can easily find the page they require.

Several factors contribute to less-than-ideal navigation:

A navbar that is unreachable. Depending on the layout of your site, you may benefit from “sticky navigation,” or navigation that follows you as you scroll.

Inadequate categorization. You should ensure that all of your most critical links are easily accessible from your primary navigation. A massive jumble of links, on the other hand, does no one any favors. Organize your favorite links.

Load times are slow. Keep in mind that robust navigation might occasionally slow down your above-the-fold load speeds. Make sure your navigation is designed in such a manner that it does not slow down your site.

5. Determine your writing style

Your writing style may influence website user engagement by influencing how readers respond to your content. What works for one audience may not work for another. On the Internet, there are two major writing styles: a casual/informal, easy-going conversational tone and a more formal professional tone.

The bulk of websites, from quirky and amusing educational websites like Buzzfeed to big Internet marketing sites, employ the former design. The formal tone, on the other hand, maybe preferable for commercial websites with more serious/important information.

Choosing a brand voice may help you not only engage your consumers but also separate you from the competition and develop trust among your audience. If you want to learn more, Distilled provides a fantastic thorough dive.

6. Make use of a responsive design.

According to Statista, 52.7 percent of the world’s population utilized mobile phones to access the Internet in 2015. By 2020, there will be approximately 7 billion mobile users globally (!). This means that Internet marketers must create flexible websites in order to engage both desktop and mobile customers. It may be difficult to access your desktop website on a mobile phone, preventing strong website user engagement.

A fully responsive website aided Biowars in thoroughly engaging users. Following the change, they saw an 80% drop in bounce rate and a phenomenal 119.97% rise in new users. Bioware also increased product engagement by averaging over 4,500 game downloads each month without marekting.

7. Research your target audience

Conducting a survey will provide you with information about your target audience’s tastes and values. This will assist you in creating content that your target audience will genuinely interact with. Inquire about what they enjoy and what they anticipate from you. Determine whether they believe you are lacking in certain design elements or content coverage.

Your input will show you where you need to improve in order to boost website user engagement. For adding polls and surveys to your website, I recommend using tools like Survey Monkey. Whatever the topic of your survey, keep questions brief and basic. Long surveys should not take up too much of your visitors’ time.

Some consumers come to your website in search of a specific information. They’ll depart if they can’t figure out how to get there. Engage your visitors by making it simple for them to locate what they’re looking for. Add a visible search box so people may easily find certain information.

Must read: SEO – Friendly Website : Why it is necessary and tips for creating one

Most websites, you’ve surely seen, have their search box on the top left. As a result, consumers often anticipate seeing the search box there. It’s recommended to keep your search box design basic, but adding features such as a drop-down menu or an auto-suggest tool might increase website user engagement.

8. Gather email addresses

Website user engagement is more than merely interacting with a new visitor once. It also refers to your capacity to entice people to return to your website. You may accomplish this by obtaining their email address, which you can then utilize to provide fresh material updates. Bloom plug-ins are excellent for establishing an opt-in form and growing your email subscriber list.

The most popular option is to display a pop-up opt-in form when visitors land on your page. You might, however, add a subscribe form to your site’s sidebar. Including an opt-in box at the conclusion of posts may also engage people who have truly loved your material. The Crazy Egg blog has a subscribe form at the bottom of each article.

9. Organize competitions or gifts.

Contests and giveaways are the most effective techniques to increase all aspects of your performance. They’re useful for increasing page views, subscriptions, conversions, and website user engagement. Create your freebies in such a way that users receive prizes for performing specific tasks. You may, for example, provide a prize for referrals, content sharing, social media likes, or product reviews/testimonials.

The advantages are evident in the instance of OfficeAdventure, an app that brings together multiple offices to embrace an active lifestyle. They employed contests to promote not just brand recognition but also online user engagement.

Conclusion

With website user engagement being such an important factor in assessing a company’s effectiveness, you should make the most of the suggestions above. Instead of settling on one, do experiments to evaluate which works best for your website design. As you can see, your primary goal should be to make your website appealing, dynamic, and user-friendly.

Author Bio:

Felix is the CEO of MaizonWeb, a web design agency in Toronto, and Toronto based 3D Virtual Tour Services provider. He loves Tech, Photography, and Web Design.