How engaged your readers are while using your platform is an important sign that determines the success of your site. With many businesses competing to attract and convert readers to their site, how your brand keeps readers engaged is just as important as conversions and retention statistics.
That being said, a high amount of traffic doesn’t equal high user website engagement. Even if you have many people visiting your platform daily, unengaged users are likely to bounce off to greener pastures or spend a minimal amount of time getting the information they need.
Often, tools like Viafoura and Google Analytics are a great start to improving your user website engagement. With users being so vital to website engagement, it’s important to understand how your digital media brand can make it happen. Here are nine actionable ideas that you can use to drive better website engagement and increase your active subscribers.
Study Your Audience
Knowing your audience’s values and preferences is a key factor in keeping them engaged with your content. Whether you gain this knowledge by using analytical tools or surveys, study the gathered data carefully. Information on which pages get visits from each user helps you understand what content resonates with them.
Similarly, using options like surveys can also get similar information directly from the users. If used in combination with analytic tools, you can get more detailed information on your audience. Applying this knowledge to offering similar content is a good strategy towards increasing user website engagement.
Better Linking
Improving your platform’s overall layout will improve your digital media brand’s SEO ratings and help your users navigate your website more easily. The improved layout goes a long way towards increasing the number of views each page gets and lowers the bounce rate. Using internal links to guide readers towards their relevant interests also helps improve engagement. However, there are a few guidelines for proper linking to ensure platforms remain user-friendly.
- All links should have descriptive anchor text
- They must be specific and relevant
- The link should take you somewhere that isn’t easily reached from your main navigation bar
Following these guidelines and having a good set of links and navigational tools across your platform leads to a big boost in website engagement.
Make the Search Box Easy to Find
When some readers visit a news platform, they might be looking to find specific information. If they can’t find it or don’t know how to start looking for it, they’ll likely leave your platform. Engage your audience more easily by showing them how they can find what they’re looking for by making your search bar easy to locate at a glance.
Many platforms often keep their search boxes up on the top right of the page, and readers will likely look for it in a similar location. It’s also recommended to use simple designs for search boxes, but adding a few other features – like automatic suggestions – can be equally important in improving user engagement.
Look to increase page speeds
Everyone has experienced the irritation of low page loading speeds while searching for necessary information at some point or another. Research has shown a greater than 55% increase in bounce rate when a company’s site loads just a second slower. This rate increases drastically with every second that a reader is spent waiting, and in terms of user engagement, it can be a devastating blow to your audience’s impression of your platform.
Taking steps to improve your news platform’s loading speed is extremely important to ensure your audience sticks around to get hooked. Tools like speed tests and plugins can help you determine and improve the platform’s speed. If the results tell you that your platform takes longer than two seconds to load, work with your web design team to find a solution.
Use Responsive Design
Studies show that over 90% of the world uses mobile devices to access the Internet, with mobile phones contributing to half of our online usage. For digital marketers and business owners, it provides an important takeaway: that responsive websites are a huge boost in engagement for users, regardless of what device they are actually using.
Responsive websites are designed to detect and adjust their format based on the access device. These websites can adjust their format to the browser’s dimensions and work even on desktops. Since many digital media users will find dealing with unoptimized web elements troublesome, a simple upgrade can significantly decrease your bounce rate.
Choose Your Content Wisely
The quality and accuracy of your content can also impact how engaged your users are. While most digital media brands have carved out a niche for themselves within the market, it’s important to pay attention to the types of content being covered and your audience’s response to your stance on particular topics and events.
Don’t this not only makes your digital media brand stand out from the competitors, but it can also develop trust and engagement among your readers as they understand that your brand is willing to take a stance and is brave enough to state their opinion regardless of its popularity.
Use Contests, Polls, and other Engagement Strategies
Implementing contests, sweepstakes, and other interactive elements with a community can be one of the best ways to improve your user website engagement where applicable. Design promotional contests or events to incentivize readers with a tangible benefit for doing certain things, like sharing an article or liking through social media. You can create contests in a way that provides readers with digital badges, banners, or stickers that they can show off while participating in your community space.
For many readers, having these fun elements can make your platform more memorable and have them engage with your website at a deeper level.
Conclusion
With audience engagement being a highly important part of determining the success of a business, you need to make sure that you choose the right ways to build engagement. Running tests and carefully studying your audience can build retention and increase profits in the long run. To get the most out of your website, you need to make sure your site is user-friendly, responsive, and attractive.
