There are a few important metrics to monitor when you are managing a website. The first is the goal conversion. Did the audience that visited your website take the desired action that you wanted them to. Secondly, did they engage with the content on the website. Monitoring the bounce rate and the engagement areas of your website can either greatly improve or negatively impact your business. It is important that businesses prioritise their efforts into engagement factors on their website. Soul Digital, a digital agency from Melbourne has provided the following tips for improving the engagement factors on a website.
Ensure that your visitors land on a page that has nice aesthetics
The look and feel of your website will either enhance or diminish the credibility and trustworthiness of your site. The website needs to look clean and professional for your desired audience. To ensure that you achieve this, you can:
Opt for the use of photos over animations
This gives your website a more professional appeal. Animations can be used, but shouldn’t be the primary focus of the design. If you plan to make your website more high-end, stick to high resolution photographs.
Stick to a minimalistic layout
Say more by having less clutter on your site. The person that is viewing your website wants to find the information on the site quickly and easily. If the design is overbearing, it will deter them from reading and they will leave your site.
Ensure that what you publish is easy to view or read
The text that is used on your website should always be legible and easy for your audience to read. This means that the text should use legible fonts, correct capitalisation and ideally be a dark text colour on a light background (For example, black text on a white background).
Avoid the use of the wrong colours
You want to make sure that your website encourages people to stay. There are colours that can be used that can scare people away. This includes over using the colour red, which may cause people to feel alerted or the overuse of the colour black, which could come across unprofessional.
Avoid the use of too many colours
One of the common errors with people developing a website is that they put too many colours on the website. This ends up making the website appear amateurish.
Create content that will keep people engaged
One of the reasons people bounce off the site is because they quickly scan for the information that they are looking for and if they don’t feel compelled to stay, they will quickly move onto the next website. There are a few ways to overcome this hurdle.
Create long-form content
It has been proven over time that people that engage with long-form content over short-form content are more likely to engage and convert on the website. By creating long-form content, people will either skim read the content and spend more time digesting the content on the web page. Analytical people will read the content word for word and will spend even longer reviewing each detail of the content.
Make good use of headings and subheadings
As we mentioned above, people love to scan information. The use of headings throughout your web content should entice the web visitor to engage further with the web content that you are presenting on your site.
Make good use of images
People love to look at images on the web. They are much easier to scan and digest. The use of images will vary depending on the audience that you are targeting. Captivating images, memes, infographics and data visualisation images are popular ways to convey information and to captivate your audience to stay on your website.
Ensure that your website speed is quick!
If you get everything else right on your website, but your website is too slow, people will leave before they even had the chance to take a look at the great things offered on your website. Use sites such as Pingdom to check the speed at which your website’s content is loading. If you find that your website is too slow, try to reduce file sizes and remove any plugins that may be slowing down the performance of your website.
Ensure that you communicate clearly to the web visitor what you want them to do
You must ensure that there is no ambiguity in what you are communicating to the web visitor on your site. If you want them to take a desired action, you must communicate that clearly to them. For example, if you want them to submit an enquiry, ensure that the web visitor can see the form and the call to action sign clearly.
The more you can reduce your bounce rate, the better results you can expect to have in terms of engagement and conversion goals being taken on your website. Prioritise your efforts to engage your web visitors to facilitate your web traffic growth and engagement success.
