How to Increase Engagement on Your Website
So you’ve built a beautiful website.
You’ve taken time to research themes, written (and re-written) copy, found some photos you love.
Publish-button pressed!
And then?
Crickets.
A few visitors here and there.
Your mom, your friends. You see that a few people visit your site. But you don’t know who they are or if they will be back.
The few people that show up leave your online home, never to be seen again.
There are so many moving parts of creating a healthy and thriving online presence.
One of the most important parts is to create a site that visitors want to engage with.
Engaging your visitors simply means giving them deeper ways to interact with your content, and with yourself.
Make it easy for your visitors to spend time on your site, get to know you, take part of your content…
You need to make it easy for your visitors to do this.
1. Get clear and build on what works
First of all: What is working on your site? Look at where your visitors are today.
At one point, this site had 30% of its visits from one blog post. But when I looked at the analytics for the site, I noticed that pretty much everyone left the site from that page.
That’s a lot people just stopping by to say HEY, never to be heard from again. It made sense. I offered them no action whatsoever to do anything else.
Actually, the biggest call to action for them was to leave my site.
So how do we make our visitors stay?
By offering them alternative things to do. Instead of leaving, give them a chance to explore more of what they already like. Include more call to actions on that page (we’ll get back to this in a minute)
See what pages get the most people visiting. You’ll learn what people are attracted to on your homepage. Choose the ones that people interact with the most and check what you can write and do more of.
2. Lead Capture
Your second step is to capture leads. What does this mean?
The overwhelming majority of visitors that arrive to your site will give it a glance, maybe have a look around and then leave the site. You will never hear from them again.
What a waste! Like having people come to your restaurant, not offering them a menu to read from.
You want to invite your visitors to return to the site. Give them a chance to interact with you.
The most common way to do this is offering something very valuable in exchange for their email address. If they give you your email, they invite you to get in touch with them through one of the most holiest of places – their inbox.
Why would they give you their email? Because you offer something valuable in return. By offering more value, you show that you care about their experience. Which in turn builds trust.
This site offers access to a library of resource material with guides, checklists and help for people who want to figure out and grow their online business.
One of the first things I invite visitors to do is to access a free resource page. They will find it relevant because it’s a topic that speaks to them.
How to get started? Check my recommended tools here.
3. Engaging content & call to actions
Have a clear purpose for every page you publish.
For instance…
What is the one big thing the reader is learning?
What is the one action you invite the reader to take?
If you mention something you’ve written about before, make sure to link back to that blog post or page. You then offer this person the choice to read more on the topic. (also, Google likes internal links!)
Keep the desired outcome of your reader top of mind. Where possible, include a call to action to take that outcome one step further.
4. Content Upgrades
A content upgrade is bonus content that the reader gets, usually in exchange for an email address.
For instance; package a long blog post into an easy to print PDF or give away an audio recording of that post.
If your visitor is reading an article about cute kittens on your site.. wouldn’t it be interesting for that person to get the 20 cutest photos of kittens you’ve collected over the years?
Most likely.
Keep your readers engaged by offering more value.
5. Simple & high-converting tools
Ok, so how do I do this?
There are some good, affordable tools available. For capturing leads, three of my favorites are Hellobar, sumo.me or leadpages that both offer simple and high-converting tools. Make sure to check out my suggested tools as well.