What increases engagement?
This is kind of a million dollar question these days. So many companies still just want a “Web Presence” with simple brochure information, and proceed to tap their IT department to slap their info onto a page. They then wonder why they are not seeing any web leads. What if you intimately know your audience and reach out and engage them, give them what they want right away, and make it a great experience? What would happen then? Whether you want a user to sign up for your service, buy your product, or simply listen to what you are saying, if your Website is not designed with your users’ needs in mind; you will fail. Modern Website users are kind of an impatient bunch, and are becoming more impatient as time and broadband speeds move forward. This impatience has many causes, to include lack of trust and the expectation of getting what we want fast and easy by engaging us right when we arrive.
If keeping users on your site were easy, everyone would be successful and our products and services would be flying off the shelves. In the real world, 95% of Websites are designed poorly and are not converting as they could be. Obviously this is no easy task and has many variables, so we will touch on a couple basics for now.
Who are my users?
Let’s start at the simplest level, “Who are my users?”. Seems like a pretty easy question, right? You ‘should’ have an idea of what you want your users to do at your Website, but are you providing it to them in a way they will understand and enjoy? Their age, background, sex, income level, interests, buying habits, online patterns (to name a few) will play a huge role in how they interact and engage with your Website. Once you have and understand all that information, you can begin to design a usable, engaging Website experience.
My site is well designed and running, why are users leaving my Website?
Assuming you have an in-depth understanding of your product and who you are marketing it to, and design your Website based on this, why aren’t they buying? Even with a nicely designed, usable site, you are merely guessing until you start tracking your users’ engagement from the start of their experience. Using Facebook as an example, in their infancy they were focused on providing more and more features to the ground-breaking social media platform without really studying users’ behavior. As they evolved, they started looking at their data associated with users and their sign-up process, made a simple design change and increased sign-ups by 9 million a year. This is something they now focus on every day. What would have happened if they did this from the beginning?
Users, usability and engagement are often overlooked when creating a Website. What’s equally overlooked is applying metrics to measure the “how” and “why” when looking at user behaviors. If both of these are done well and from the beginning, you are greatly increasing your chances for success now and in the future.
Contact Webolutions at 303-300-2640 to discuss ways to increase your Website usability and engagement.
