Have you created a website, only to find that you’re not getting the engagement you were hoping for? In this blog, we’ll demystify the process of increasing your site’s engagement by explaining how to pinpoint the engagement you want, measure it, and find your niche.
Finally, we’ll close with some extra ways to make your site appealing and suggest a solution if you feel stuck in your content marketing efforts. Read on to learn more!
1. Decide What Engagement You Want
Before you can increase the engagement on your site, you need to figure out what type of engagement you want in the first place. The type of engagement you choose will impact how you measure it, so be sure to pick something that can be measured, and choose a content marketing strategy that aligns with the types of engagement you’re looking for.
Here are some examples of engagement that you could strive for on your website:
- Click-through-rate (CTR). This type of engagement shows that a user is learning more about your brand and your website. The more they know about you, the higher the chances are that they will buy from you.
- Active participation. If the user is commenting on your posts, discussing topics, answering survey or poll questions, it’s a good way to tell they like what you offer.
- Social sharing. If your site visitor likes what they see, they may click on a social sharing button for their friends to enjoy as well. They’re getting the word out for you, and increasing engagement by making it more available to their friends.
- Watching videos or looking at images. If you’ve got images for your site guests to view or relevant videos, that’s another type of engagement you could aim for.
- Returning visitors. You can see how many people came back to your website over a period of time under “Frequency and Recency” under “Audience” in Google Analytics.
Find a Way to Measure It
Although CTR and social are easy to measure using Google Analytics or other site analytics software, it may not be as simple to measure participation or who’s watching videos. However, it’s important to find a way, because if you can’t measure it, you can’t tell if it’s working.
The Engagement topic on Google Analytics allows you to see which web pages are getting the most user engagement, and how long audiences spend on each page. If you’ve got a blog, people tend to visit only one page, which means that your “0-10 seconds” section will be high and the other numbers will likely be much lower.
2. Think About Which Niche to Target
When your business is just beginning, you often need to think about how to attract the niche you feel would most benefit from your company’s products and services. At that stage, your search for a niche is often just as much about you as it is about the customers you hope to attract.
Here are some things to consider when trying to find your niche:
- Your interests. As a business owner, you’ll likely want to find customers who share interests that are similar to yours, or who would benefit from your knowledge.
- Don’t try to please everyone. If you focus on attracting the right people, you’ll be light-years ahead of competitors who are trying to appeal to everyone.
- Problems that you can solve. Think about what you can do to solve common problems that your customers may be facing.
- Find your unique selling point. Take time to determine what sets your business apart from your competitors. Once you know what it is, you can use that to better market your product or service.
However, after some time in the industry, it’s a good idea to conduct market research to see who your customers actually are. You’ll usually find that your company appeals to multiple niches, and if you’d like, you can create client personas using the information you glean from your market research.
3. Make Your Site As Appealing As Possible
The web design for your site should be as appealing to your target audience as possible. There are a few areas of this that are non-negotiable in today’s digital age:
- Website security. Hackers are always on the lookout for easy targets. Don’t invite them in. Creating difficult passwords, using anti-malware software, and buying an SSL certificate are just a few ways you can protect your website.
- Faster page loading speeds. In the early days of the internet, slow loading times were expected. Now, people will “bounce” from your website if it doesn’t load within the first two to three seconds. Bounce rates are also why it’s a good idea to ensure external links on your site open in a new tab rather than the same window.
- Lightweight images. Part of the reason many sites experience slow loading speeds is because their images are too “heavyweight.” It’s best to use lightweight images, or images that are less than 200 megabytes. They take less time to deploy, creating a faster page load speed for your site. Here’s a rundown of image files that are best.
- Use responsive web design. Over half of web traffic comes from mobile devices, so it’s crucial to ensure that your website loads beautifully on both mobile and desktop. This is a great resource to tell you more about responsive design for websites.
Need help with your web design or content marketing efforts from an award-winning company like Matcha Design? We’re happy to help – just contact us with your project details and we’ll be in touch soon. We look forward to hearing from you!
