Are you looking to boost your presence online? Maybe we can help. Polygon Marketing has years of experience in website development and maintenance, helping our clients to stand out from the crowd through our cost effective online packages and search engine optimisation expertise.

When setting out to create a successful website, you should always be mindful of user engagement so that as visitors land on your site, they are compelled to read your content, interact with your forms, and click-through on your calls-to-action. Put simply, user engagement is when visitors to your site appreciate your content enough to stick around and contact you to find out more.

When user engagement is high, you will find that your audience becomes more loyal. You will notice more return visits and higher lead conversions for example, because your website works for your audience.

10 top tips: The best ways to increase user engagement on your website

Make your site faster to load

Your web pages should load instantly for visitors if you hope to keep them on-site and engaging with your various web elements. Even a one-second decline in load speed can harm user engagement and conversions.

De-clutter your layout

Too much confusion can lead to higher bounce rates, which is the opposite of user engagement. If your layout has too much going on, switch to a simpler design. Your menu should also be centre-stage and easy enough for anyone to figure out. Use plenty of white space so your content is easy on the eyes and always use readable fonts and text sizes.

Streamline your site’s navigation

Your site visitors should be able to find the information they crave within two or three clicks, at the most. A best practice is to provide a simple navigation menu and make good use of page and blog post categories to make information organized and constantly accessible. Also include a search box so visitors can always find what they need instantly.

Improve your linking structure

Links should have descriptive anchor text, clearly signalling where it will take the user, and be specific and relevant to their respective landing pages. Most of all, links should work, so test them to make sure they lead somewhere before publishing.

Lengthen your text

Studies show that pages with 1,000 to 2,500 words tend to experience the highest user engagement. Don’t expand your text with needless blurb for the sake of it, but do your best to provide quality, informative, and actionable content that provides value to your target audience.

Break up your content

Few people are going to take the time to read a block of text, especially one that’s up to 2,000 words in length. For better results, break your content up using relevant and keyword rich subheadings, bullet points and numbered lists, and lots of white space between concise paragraphs. You can also break up your content with relevant images and videos.

Display related content

Amazon uses related purchases to keep visitors browsing and buying. You can do the same with relevant pages and posts, either via links within your text or related stories at the end of your posts.

Provide helpful information 

Create thorough, useful content that serves users’ needs. When you create useful content that helps your target audience do their jobs better – your site will become a destination for them.

Mobile friendly

Whether a person is using a desktop, mobile phone or wearable tech to access your website, the information that visitor needs should always be easily found. Always put the most critical information above the fold (in other words, before your user needs to start scrolling) so it can be clicked, read, or else otherwise accessed on any device.

Be clear about what you want from your visitor

Never assume that your site visitors know what you want of them. Whether it’s submitting a form, entering their email address, or clicking a button to learn more, state those instructions in clear enough language that anyone can understand. Your calls to action should stand out so they’re always noticed with commanding language that directs the conversion.

Analytics

“Google Analytics allows us to delve into the details of visitors and analyse where, if anywhere, we can improve. We produce monthly reports for all of the websites we manage using Google Analytics to take qualified actions and make alterations where necessary. Our record speaks for itself; we have improved year on year traffic across all of the websites we manage by an average of 53.4%.”

Chris Ray
PR and Media Planning Manager

Hopefully we’ve given you some things to think about, but if you would like to find out more about how we can help boost your digital profile, don’t hesitate to contact one of the Polygon team.