7 Website Strategies Proven to Increase User Engagement

Unlike a brick-and-mortar store, a website is not limited by its location. With a website you can influence visitors and traffic to a much greater degree – your engagement strategy decides whether your website is in the equivalent of a hard-to-find back street in the suburbs or in a prime location on the main boulevard of the business district. This raises the question of how to increase user engagement on your website – this article offers 7 tried and tested strategies to do just that.

Why is website user engagement so important?

User engagement is the level of interaction, involvement, and interest users have with your website. The level of engagement is effectively a measure of user satisfaction and loyalty – and an indicator of future business.

A solid user engagement strategy can improve:

• Customer retention
• User satisfaction
• Brand loyalty
• Online visibility
• Competitive advantage

High levels of user engagement also means more input from users and this kind of feedback can be used to further improve products and services that, in turn, attract and engage more users.

7 strategies that increase user engagement

Gaining and retaining users is a challenge for any business. To meet that challenge, check out the following – how does your website measure up?

1. Make a great first impression

Visuals matter – as soon as your site loads it should grab users’ attention. For many users, the website is their introduction to your brand and the images, layout, color palette, fonts, style etc. should all compel the visitor to stay and explore.

However, the very first impression that a visitor gets from your website has nothing to do with its appearance, it’s about how fast it loads. According to Google data, 53% of visits are abandoned if a mobile site takes longer than three seconds to load. Good looks are important but you also need to optimize loading speed by compressing images, limiting redirects, and optimizing CSS and JavaScript.

For more on improving your site’s loading speed, check out PageSpeed.

2. Provide relevant content…

Looking good and loading fast are essential, but so is substance. Users need to find genuinely useful and interesting content on your site. Products and services must be described clearly, information must be understandable and easy to find. Content should also be varied – including written material, videos, podcasts, gamification, etc. – engaging a variety of user preferences.

Personalizing your content is another tactic to increase user engagement. Use AI to provide recommendations based on past browsing behavior. Offer ‘onboarding’ materials, such as user guides, blog posts or videos, testimonials, or product/service recommendations that align with where the user is on their customer journey with you.

3. …and not just on-site content

Part of increasing user engagement is driving traffic to your website. This often means a focus on search engine optimization (SEO) to help your site show up in search results. However, while SEO is an important part of your site marketing strategy, it should not be the only traffic-driving option. Another proven tactic is to post engaging content on your social media platforms – content that generates interest that can be satisfied by clicking through to the website. Website links can be placed in your account bio, in the posts themselves, or in comments or group chats. Tactics to encourage clicking through include creating curiosity (e.g. give the first part of a story), selling the benefits of your website content, or calls to action that appeal to the emotions.

4. Page design should help the user

Page design must be user-friendly – straightforward to understand, clearly laid out, and intuitive to navigate. Support for the user – to ensure they don’t get lost or lose interest – can be provided in a variety of forms, including live chat, chatbots, popup help options, or FAQs. The ideal solution is a combination of human support and automation.

5. Encourage users to take action

Call to action (CTA) buttons are a simple and effective way to increase user engagement – after all, you’re only asking the user to make one click. A series of CTAs can be used to guide the user through the website and engagement process. However, CTAs must be appealing to the user and the key to this is to focus them on the user’s journey or experience (and not on your goal of selling a product, setting up a meeting, gathering user information, etc.) Encourage users to “Learn more”, “Get started” or “Try for free” instead of “Buy now”. Once you have the copy, to make your CTAs truly engaging, consider aspects such as placement on the page, color and typography. Consider A/B testing different options with users to find out what appeals most.

For more on A/B testing options and more, check out Kissmetrics.

6. Be honest – tell them exactly who you are

So far, any of these tactics or strategies could be used in an open and honest way, or in a manipulative way. But to increase user engagement with your specific target audience, the best tactic is usually not to deceive. Your website should reflect your brand identity and values. People have always brought into brands as much as individual products and by being open about who you are and what’s important to you, you will attract your core user audience. On a B2B level, this includes providing case studies that show how you work with your clients and customers – how you collaborate to help them achieve their business goals with your products or services. An excellent tool for this is to include your service standards on your website. You may offer a variety of services, for example, but there will be common principles, approaches and methodologies to how you work with your clients. Providing service standards is more than giving users information, it’s making them a promise.

7. A faultless user experience

The overall UX of your website should be focused on increasing user engagement. The user experience includes every aspect of their interaction with your website. Engagement happens when users respond positively to that experience.

Use metrics and tools such as average session duration, time on page, bounce rate and conversion rate to identify any steps in the user’s journey that cause people to leave the website. Such points on the journey are opportunities to optimize, improve, and increase user engagement still further.

Finally, talk to your users. Feedback is a key source of valuable information for increasing user engagement. Ask them what works, what turns them off, which parts of your website are confusing or difficult. User surveys and testing – either for the website as a whole or focused on individual elements – is a key part of getting the most from any of the above strategies.

At Boldare, we apply all of the above to our design and development work. To focus on a few practical specifics that are standard practice for us:

• We use links to distribute traffic and make sure that users will find all the relevant information they need on a webpage.
• We make it easy for users to get in touch with us by situating contact details in highly visible locations.
• Our landing pages have only one, primary call to action, ensuring simplicity and ease for the user.
• We routinely monitor website performance to ensure widespread accessibility.

Measuring user engagement

In addition to talking to your users, the use of some key metrics can provide useful information to increase user engagement. The most common user engagement metrics are:

• Bounce rate – Users ‘bounce’ when they leave your website as soon as they arrive (usually after clicking through from a search engine or social media). This is a good measure of your website’s first impression. Depending on your brand and industry, you should aim for a bounce rate of no more than 40%.
• Time on page – The longer a user spends on a single website page, the more engaging that page is.
• Session duration – A session is the time spent on your website as a whole. The difference is that a longer session duration indicates a user that is exploring your site more deeply, beyond the landing page.
• Conversion rate – This is the number of users who complete a specific, desired action compared with the overall number of visitors. That action might be a purchase, giving information (e.g. an email address), agreeing to an initial meeting…

There are various options that will enable you to track these metrics – for example, tools such as Hotjar’s heatmaps and recordings can enable you to visualize user behavior and see what they see during a website visit.

Increase your user engagement

User engagement is a key challenge for any brand or website. Attracting traffic is one thing, persuading visitors to stick around and explore what you have to offer is another. By using tried and tested strategies to improve your website’s UX, creating a seamless, attractive and intuitive user journey, you can reduce your bounce rate, increase time on page and session duration, and boost your conversion rates – all proven ways in which to increase user engagement.