No successful business has ever overlooked website engagement as a leading focus. From ensuring flawless customer experience to increasing sales, it is one of the most crucial factors that affect brand loyalty. Plus, it helps businesses to gain a strong foothold in the digital ecosystem. What’s more, website engagement also serves as a fantastic source of engaging with customers while ensuring higher lead generation.
Therefore, businesses need to ensure an appealing and attractive web design to increase user engagement on their websites. Along the same lines, businesses must consider several factors when strategizing website conversion optimization to achieve the desired results.
So do you want to know about those factors and how they influence the behaviour or journey of your website visitors? Here are five potent techniques narrowed down by the experts at Viafoura which help you improve website engagement strategies.
1. Use chatbots and live chats for convenient access and stress-free access to help
A news website must be responsive, as website visitors get frustrated when they don’t get real-time solutions to their problems. Quickly resolving mini disasters such as a frozen website page and others is important. Hence, businesses need to facilitate the users with a one-click click solution or instant customer support as and when needed.
Leaving the website users to waste their time finding customer support doesn’t create a good impression. Instead, provide convenient and accessible resources for helping them resolve their problems. The faster you resolve their issue, the higher their chances of becoming a life-long customer of your business.
Chatbots and live chat prove to be perfect options for the aforementioned problem. These solutions allow the website owners to ensure flawless customer service 24×7, resulting in happy and satisfied customers. In addition, these solutions also reduce the stress of both the brand and its customers, not to mention that the process of customer service also becomes straightforward. Lastly, the technique reduces the odds of losing potential customers.
2. Create content that influences people
The quality of a website’s content has a direct correlation with user engagement. If you want your site to be visited by highly influential people, ensure its content is top-notch. The goal is to create content that is both dense and appealing.
You can play around with different structures and formats, such as infographics, videos, text, podcasts, etc. But, most importantly, pick an exciting niche. For example, infographics perform well in finance, and videos are perfect for tutorials, tech, product reviews, gaming, etc.
The idea here is to bring thousands of visitors to your site within a short span of time, most likely during a major news outbreak. Also, do not forget to select a suitable format that complements the content type you have chosen for your site, as it has a massive impact on your website’s look and design.
3. Work on the internal linking structure and use related anchor texts
Simply boosting your website’s SEO ranking will not help increase its engagement. You need an excellent internal linking structure that allows visitors to navigate the site quickly and easily. Internal linking is one of the most effective tactics for generating more page views, as it will lower the bounce rate and deliver a better user experience.
Ensure to find relevant anchor texts when linking other content. Follow these basics when finding anchor text for internal linking:
- Choose hyper-relevant and specific anchor text.
- The internal links should add value to that particular content, and should preferably be one that’s not easily accessible on simple navigation of the site — perhaps a piece of older news that sheds more light on a recent one.
For example, if the news is about “bounce rate,” you may link an infographic or a relevant video with “bounce rate” as the anchor text. Tip – avoid excessive internal linking or anchor texts in content.
4. Add an interactive search feature to your website
Even if your news website has a simple navigation structure and design, it may be difficult for visitors to look for content matching their interests or needs, particularly if your website has tons of pages and posts. Hence, ensure to enable interactive website search features so that the visitors can easily access the desired content without having to spend much time.
This tactic will also allow you to add other options, such as autocomplete, interactive search, faceted search, and others. These features can predict what the visitors need, meaning the interface will be able to make suggestions for similar products/content. So, even if the users are looking for products or services you don’t provide, they can be directed to similar items and features on the site.
Here are some tricks that you can follow to make your news site more interactive:
- Add an autocomplete feature for helping users find a particular news update, even if they are unsure of the complete headline.
- The search should allow for misspellings of products or words.
- Use merchandising and AI to suggest similar products to maximize sales.
- Add text results, images, and videos.
- Include an FAQ page
5. Add customized 404 pages
Customized 404 pages are one of the best ways to direct users to content relevant to their search. So even if they don’t find the page they are searching for or encounter a page error, they can be directed to related content news articles on the site.
Consider the following ideas for a custom 404 page:
- Direct the visitors to a page that aligns with their search
- Include a search box – it will help them find a different news update or post related to their search
- Add the “related news” feature to encourage your visitors to stay on your website a little longer.
Conclusion
Site engagement has a massive impact on a business’s performance online. Make the most of the tips mentioned above to achieve your goals. Note that it is also important to run tests and find what is suitable for your website’s design. It’s not wise to settle with one or two techniques for a long time. Lastly, focus on creating a user-friendly, interactive, and attractive news website.
