10 Tips to Make Your Website More Engaging For Your Users
It’s crucial to make a good impression on people who check out your brand. The best way to proactively inspire them in the year 2022 is through a website. So, to make a long-lasting impression on visitors, you need to make your website more interesting.
Just keep in mind that the first three or four seconds of a user’s visit can determine whether or not they will become paying customers. It stands to reason that the more interesting and straightforward your website is to navigate, the more people will look it up. Simply put, a convincing and well-built design is the driving force behind the expansion of your company.
In order to succeed, you must understand what constitutes “maximum engagement” and how to increase this crucial website factor to increase your future leads and revenue.
What is User Engagement?
Simply put, user engagement occurs when site visitors enjoy your content enough to read it, take it in, and ultimately take action.
First and foremost, you’ll notice that when user engagement is high, your audience becomes more loyal. Because your website is so effective, more people will keep coming back.
Types of User Engagement
When it comes to websites, there are many different levels of interaction. Here are some:
- Reading & Absorbing Content
User engagement occurs when a visitor to your site lands on the homepage, reads the content, and then navigates to other pages within your site.
They’re doing research on your company and products.
The more knowledgeable your customer is, the more likely they are to make a purchase from you. That’s why it’s crucial to your success that you boost website engagement.
- Visitor Comments & Discussions
Users are actively engaged when they take part in your website’s interactive content. For example completing a quiz, voting in a poll, filling out a survey, chatting with a bot, etc.
These additions are not only fun for your visitors, but they also increase engagement and encourage them to return and tell their friends.
- Social Shares
Those who enjoy reading what you have to say on your blog may decide to “like” it on Facebook and share it with their friends. Simply clicking on your site’s social sharing buttons can increase interaction.
- Watching Videos & Viewing Images
Providing a media gallery page means there will be more content for visitors to peruse. Maximize the quality of all visual-oriented content, not just the images on your homepage; fuzzy or otherwise poor-quality imagery is unacceptable.
Now that you have an idea about user engagement and its types,
Here are 10 tips to make your website more engaging for the users.
1. Have a simple layout for your homepage
To make a user-friendly website, a basic layout of the homepage is a good place to begin.
Free and paid pre-built templates are available for use with website builders like WordPress
Picking and choosing elements from those designs and other sites can be the first step in crafting an interesting layout.
2. Mix up the layout
Numerous websites online use the same design for every page. Maintaining a consistent style is commendable; however, if you want your site to feel modern and inviting, consider refreshing the designs of the various folders in your navigation bar.
You may wish to have a different layout for your blog than you do for your products and services page. It will make your site visitors feel like they are exploring new content each time they visit..
3. Use white space
You shouldn’t be afraid of white space.
The notion that every blank space on a page must be filled can consume some people. Although appealing, this approach fails to deliver in terms of design effectiveness.
When a site is completely covered, it’s like walking into a crowded room. Visitors to a poorly organised website are in the same position as someone trying to clean a cluttered room: they have no idea where to begin.
White space on a website is effective because it draws the eye and guides the reader’s focus from one section to the next.
4. Choose colors strategically
There is a psychological impact of colour.
Certain associations are made between colours and the emotions they evoke. For this reason, the predominant colours of fast food establishments are red and yellow. Colors like those have been shown to stimulate appetite.
Blue is a soothing colour, which is why many online businesses and social media sites (like Facebook and Twitter) choose to use it.
Create an attractive website by carefully selecting your colour palette.
Distracting and off-putting colour combinations can discourage site visitors from exploring further. Use no more than three colours on your site, and make the third an accent.
The colours in your logo should serve as inspiration for your overall colour scheme. Make sure the colours on your website match the ones in your logo. One more colour is allowed if it’s black and white.
5. Use clean, easy-to-read fonts
The fonts you use should complement the tone and purpose of your website and brand. Confused about which typeface to use to attract readers to your website? Due to its clean readability, san-serif fonts are commonly used for the majority of a website’s standard content.
In general, serif fonts like Times New Roman are better for print, while sans-serif fonts like Arial and Roboto are better for digital reading. Serif fonts add a touch of sophistication to online titles and headers when used as contrast and accents.
Make sure the correct font size is used when posting on the web.
It is recommended that websites use at least a 16-point font size for body text, especially on mobile devices. If you go any smaller, your OS will automatically zoom in, making everything very small and unreadable. Labels and captions can be a point or two smaller, while headers should be the same size or a point or two larger.
- Fonts should be viewed on as many devices as possible to ensure optimal viewing.
- Depending on the typeface you use, the text size you enter will shift accordingly.
- Georgia and Courier New have different equivalent sizes for a 12-point font.
6. Make your site mobile-friendly
Develop a mobile-optimized version of your website. In today’s society, mobile phone usage is extremely common. According to Google, 70% of all internet use occurs on mobile devices, and users have high expectations that their favourite sites will render correctly on these devices.
Your site’s credibility will be assessed by how well it works on mobile devices. Users are much less likely to interact with a mobile site that is poorly designed. In fact, users are 52% less likely to interact with a business if they have a poor mobile experience(source:webfx).
This means that the more effort you put into making your site mobile-friendly, the longer visitors from mobile devices will stay.
7. Make it easy to navigate
Website design that succeeds has a distinct hierarchy that makes sense to users.
Your site’s menu must provide links to all of your pages. Popular websites usually use a pyramidal structure for their menus, where broad categories are listed first and then more narrow ones.
Your site will benefit from pyramid navigation because it will be easier for search engines to crawl through it, resulting in faster page indexing and a higher position in search results (which can lead to more visitors).
In addition, users will be able to quickly navigate to the information they need, which will boost your site’s engagement and give you more freedom in crafting an effective layout.
8. Make your contact details easy to find
Keep your information handy so that people can reach you. You could put them on a “about” page that visitors could access via the menu. Or you could put them in the footer at the bottom of your web pages, like many other sites do.
An easy-to-find contact page increases customer satisfaction and loyalty. On the other hand, people will become aggravated if they can’t get in touch with you when they need you to resolve a problem if they haven’t saved your contact information in a convenient location.
Verify that your contact details are correct and consistent across all of your online profiles (such as your Google Business Profile listing). Having consistent contact information across the web increases your authority.
9. Place social media plugins
Adding social media plugins to your site makes it more user-friendly and facilitates content sharing on various networks.
They’re a simple addition to your site that will greatly improve:
- Brand awareness
- Traffic to your site
- Presence on social media
- Natural backlinks
- Your site’s user experience
- Your brand’s engagement
Popular locations for social media plugins include the page’s top and bottom, immediately adjacent to and following the content, and in the sidebars.
10. Include clear CTAs
You should highlight each CTA on your page so that it stands out. In order to convert, CTAs are used.
Without clear calls to action (CTAs), visitors to your page are much less likely to take any action.
All calls to action (CTAs) must be prominently displayed. In addition, they need to be tailored to the specific needs of your sales funnel’s various segments. Use engaging, prompting language in your CTAs, and make it crystal clear what you want the reader to do in response to each.
Conclusion
Making a website that people want to spend time on from scratch is a lot of work. Therefore, we have provided the most effective means for making your website more user-friendly for your benefit. If you follow them, you will be successful in 2022 and beyond.
Your website will definitely benefit from using this checklist. It’s a long-term investment that will pay off in a slew of improvements to your web app’s speed and functionality. Further, if you implement these recommendations, your website will be ready for whatever the future may bring.
References
- https://www.crazyegg.com/blog/increase-user-engagement-website/
- https://blog.techliance.com/make-website-more-engaging/
- https://www.cleveroad.com/amp/blog/5-best-tips-and-tricks-to-increase-user-engagement-on-website/
- https://www.wix.com/blog/amp/2018/07/increase-website-user-engagement
- https://www.webfx.com/blog/web-design/user-experience-matters-marketing/
- https://www.blog.google/products/marketingplatform/analytics/mobile-challenge-and-how-measure-it/
10 Things you must do for Website Maintenance
You’ve just spent a large portion of your hard-earned money on a new, user-friendly website designed to attract visitors. Whew! You won’t have to bother about website upkeep for at least a few years. Is this what you’re thinking?
If Yes, you’re wrong!
A website is a lot like a vehicle. That well tuned engine will freeze up and become nothing more than a large, costly ornament for your driveway if you don’t do routine oil changes. It’s just as pointless if you don’t take aggressive measures to manage your website regularly.
You don’t want to squander your money, therefore we are going to share with you 10 website maintenance activities that you should do at least once a month.
1. Analyse your site’s performance with Google Search Console/Bing Webmaster Tools
Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools should be best friends since they will alert you to possible issues before they have a chance to wreck your internet marketing plans.
Search engines like Google and Bing may not properly crawl and index your sites if you have an issue with them. Is a nefarious rival attempting to get you punished by pointing a few thousand low-quality links to your site? In other words, did someone break into your site and introduce malware? When issues arise webmasters may get email and dashboard notifications from Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.
2. Review analytics
With the use of analytics, you can see issues as well as possibilities. An increase in traffic (along with an increase in conversions) may be an indication that your online marketing is working, while a decrease in traffic may be an indication that you have SEO issues. You may learn a lot about a visitor’s needs by following the journey they take to a page with a high bounce rate. Your clients’ interests will be shown by the pages that get the greatest traffic (visits, social shares, links, referrals, etc.).
Because the meaning of the same data might vary greatly from one firm to another, there is no one size fits all solution.
Because Google Analytics is both free and quite effective, We strongly suggest it.
3. Automated backup
If your website is wiped completely, you’re out of luck since most web servers don’t include automatic backups in their normal hosting plans. There will always be a reason to put off backing up your website by hand, so it’s better to have it done automatically. In terms of website upkeep, this is a critical consideration.
You can use different free and paid tools to automatically backup your websites.
4. Update WordPress and plugins
When we bring on a new customer and get into their admin area for the first time, we find a lot of outdated WordPress core and plugins. People seem to believe that making changes to their website only has to be done once but it’s not true. If not weekly, it should be done at the very least monthly due to the constant discovery of new security flaws.
Hackers acquired access to the Panama Papers using a plugin called Revolution Slider that they hadn’t updated, but you’ve already heard about it before. Even if the consequences aren’t as catastrophic as getting hacked, the possibility exists.
Furthermore, there’s no excuse for not performing frequent WordPress core and plugin updates. Everything may be modified with a few mouse clicks in your admin area.
5. Check for broken links
In addition to annoyance for visitors, broken links may have a negative impact on your website’s search engine rankings. Due to the fact that they can’t locate any pages on your site, search engine bots will devalue your site as a whole if this occurs often. If a credible site has a broken link, smart marketers will hunt for it and ask the site owner to connect to their page. As a result, losing key backlinks might be a result of broken links.
You could have:
- Link with a typo
- Moved a page and neglected to check other pages on your site for links to the previous location
- Deleted a plugin that left links in your content or changed a picture with an image that has a different file name disabled
- Provide a link to other websites or pages that are no longer accessible.
6. Multiple devices should be used to see the website.
To ensure that your website displays properly across various devices, do a quick test on the most important pages using many different web browsers, plugins, and script libraries before making any updates. (Desktop, laptop, tablet, and mobile phone.)
7. Check page speed
Your website performance may have been optimised immediately after your previous makeover, but you may have made some changes that have made it slower since then. To make sure it’s still loading swiftly, run it via Google’s PageSpeed Insights.
8. Test checkout process
Because the shopping cart, payment gateway, and any other plugins that are part of this procedure need to be tested on a regular basis for security reasons, it’s critical that you do a test transaction each month to ensure everything works as it should.
9. Test search function
Search functionality has been demonstrated to enhance visitor duration on site, but only if the results are useful. This is best tested by asking someone who is a good match for the target audience to run a few searches.
10. Update contact information
When clients can’t get in touch with you, they’re less likely to believe what you say. All contact information, including phone numbers, addresses, and social media connections, must be updated on a regular basis.
Final words
Keeping an eye on and maintaining your website is much like taking care of any other piece of company equipment. In order to remain relevant, your website has to evolve along with your industry and business. It will operate like a well-oiled machine as a result of these actions. Keeping your website up and running is simple if you stick to a routine and make a must-do list. As long as you put this effort, your website will be functioning at peak efficiency.
References
- https://www.getfeedback.com/resources/ux/7-easy-ways-to-maintain-your-website/
- https://businesscollective.com/your-10-step-guide-to-website-maintenance/index.html
- https://www.siteuptime.com/blog/2018/04/16/6-things-you-can-do-to-keep-website-maintenance-up-to-date/
- https://www.process.st/checklist/website-maintenance-checklist/