Audience interaction is a highly important function for any business, and your website should make this concept as easy as possible.
Without people interacting with your website, your company will be less visible online, therefore, limiting how effective your online presence is, creating more challenges for you in the process.
Interactive website design is crucial to be able to connect with your audience. A powerful website lowers bounce rate, boosts brand awareness, encourages sharing and engagement, helps to build backlinks, and increases the conversation rate of your content.
While these are great reasons why you should have an interactive website, it can be overwhelming to put this into practice… but fear not, because SALVé has some solutions for you!
Here are nine ways you can increase the interactivity of your website.
1. Encourage Social Sharing
Sharing content through your social media channels is a surefire way to boost your company’s presence, and ability to interact with customers, potential customers, and the greater public.
Website visitors should be able to easily share your content with their own networks. To enable this, make sure you have included clear and easy functions that allow visitors to share the content on every page on your website.
Everything you have on your website and that you create, from your blog posts, to social media posts, to product pages and beyond, should have readily available options to share in various ways.
The options to share to Instagram/Twitter/LinkedIn etc. that you see on other websites are there for this exact reason. Utilize it! (Be careful not to make them too obvious, though, as this takes away from your website’s interface and usability.)
People love when brands interact with them online, so make an effort to like and comment on the posts and content of your followers. Encourage story-telling through your channels, and most importantly, make it human!
2. Include Relevant Links
Blog posts are multi-faceted in what they can achieve for you and your business. Firstly, they are meant to inform and engage your audience. Secondly, once you have the attention of the reader, blogs are meant to convert that attention into website traffic.
To establish authority in your blogs (and other social postings), include links to your older blogs, information sources, and other authoritative websites as a way to increase your reputation.
The more relevant content (of your own) that you can provide to readers, the more likely you are to hook them into your business and convert them into paying customers, or at the very least, regular visitors.
3. User-Generated Content
Publishing user-generated content to your website (and social media channels) encourages your audience to interact with not only your website, but with other customers too.
Recognition of this content shows your audience that you value them, and this incentivizes them to connect and engage with your business even more.
By showcasing your audience, you are building a community around you that will grow as exposure of this increases.
4. Do You Prefer Quizzes, Surveys, or Polls?
One of the best ways to see increased engagement and get valuable feedback is through quizzes, surveys and polls.
Quizzes allow your customers to engage with you directly, by giving you an answer to your questions, making them more likely to follow your company, recommend you to their networks, and become paying customers.
Surveys allow you to get a sense of your customers’ likes and dislikes, and get feedback on new products and services.
Polls are similar to surveys, but you can get even more direct feedback about a specific issue with having a vote.
5. Want to Talk?
Your company should not be afraid to talk to your site’s visitors.
By publishing your contact information you are inviting your audience to engage directly with you and, this can give you valuable feedback on any number of areas.
Encouraging comments on your content is another way to converse with your audience, so utilize this where available.
6. Animations
One of the most engaging elements a website can have are visuals which people will remember.
Image-based content can lead to a greater retention rate, and reduced bounce rate on your website. In turn, this encourages them to read more, think more, and do more with your website while it’s in front of them.
Videos are a great way to tell your business’ story, allowing your audience to learn more about your company, your mission and what products or services you offer.
7. What are You Looking For?
Having a search bar on your website improves the overall usability of your website. This allows your web traffic to easily and quickly find what they are looking for, thus improving interactivity.
Ensure that all of your content is searchable and easy to find, so your users can find anything they might be looking for.
8. Keep it Live(ly)
Live tools such have the ability of to increase interactivity with very little effort once they have been setup online.
These could include calendars, showing what’s coming up within your business or industry; news feeds relevant to your area of work; and image carousels showcasing your finest products, or content.
You must ensure your tools fit your business objectives, otherwise they may feel random or out of place.
Further interactive tools you could include are:
- Calendars to facilitate booking appointments.
- Google Maps to show where your company is located.
- Product or service calculators so people know how much they will be spending as they browse.
9. You’re Pushing my Buttons (and Forms)
Including forms on your website can help with user engagement and improves communication channels. Contact forms help people know the best ways to contact you and help you to gather data on your audience.
These forms will also help to streamline your communications as all of the queries and questions will flow through one place on your website, allowing you to engage more with this information as it becomes available.
Adding buttons which allow traffic to you to subscribe to newsletters, blogs, podcasts, social media accounts, and so on, are valuable at encouraging interaction with your traffic.
You should be giving the option on your website which allow users to share your content online directly from your webpage.
Conclusion
Encouraging interaction can be difficult without a plan, and the more you try and guess your strategy, the less you will understand about how your audience interacts with you.
Make sure you are incorporating these measures into your everyday approach to marketing and communication. These are tried-and-tested methods which continue to work for some of the most successful brands in the world. Why not give yourself that same opportunity?
To find out how you can turn your website into a masterpiece of interactivity, contact SALVé today for a free discovery call.
