You’ve done a great job of attracting people to your website, but your visitors aren’t converting. This is an all-too-common problem marketers have and one that is of the utmost importance. If you build it, they will come, but will they convert? If website visitors aren’t ultimately generating revenue, that is an opportunity lost but one that you can do something about. Designing experiences that create an engaging website, that is easy to navigate, and is customer experience-centric, is the key to converting. The benefits of creating a healthy relationship with your website visitors increases the likelihood they will visit again and again as well as become a loyal customer.
The first step in creating an engaging website is to understand and communicate your why: why you do what you do, be it your purpose, your cause, or your belief. According to bestselling author and speaker Simon Sinek, people don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it. The goal is not to do business with people who need what you have; the goal is to do business with people who believe what you believe. This must be communicated on your website to connect to visitors on an emotional level, which is required to convert.
Get to Know Your Audience
The next step is to identify your target audience. Get to know what it is they do, who they are, and the pain points that you are solving. From there you can create clear and relevant content for your website, sharing your why and connecting directly to your ideal customer. That said, you must break through the noise and the competition to keep your customer engaged. For example, every day people receive about 105,000 words or 34 gigabytes of information. They get inundated by information from mobile devices, online entertainment, the internet, email, TV, radio, newspapers, books, social media, and the list goes on. That’s a lot of information and since your website is part of that information, your brand needs to stand out, connect, and engage with your visitors.
People seek out a brand because they are looking to be educated, entertained, engaged and/or inspired. Your website should offer that in order to keep people interested. Your content should reflect that, too. If people have a choice about where they can go to find information, a product, or service (the kind that you provide), then you need to capture their attention. The longer they stay engaged with your website, the better chances they have in purchasing.
Empowering the Consumer
Website engagement is defined as how well a brand is able to delight and retain the mindshare of the customers or users. It is about whether your users are finding any value by measuring certain activities such as downloads, clicks, shares, and more.
Snigdha Patel, Reve Chat
Identifying what to have on your website is determined by what engaging content will benefit your visitors. Interactive tools that engage and empower buyers give brands a creative edge. In fact, interactive content gains two times more engagement than static content, according to DemandGen.
Interactive content just happens to be the new and improved way to interact with customers. It’s about establishing a two-way conversation. Prospects and customers decide what content to consume, how and when they want to.
Lee Odden, CEO, TopRank Marketing
Examples of Interactive Tools and Dynamic Content
The following are just some examples of interactive tools that can be used on your website:
- quizzes
- calculators
- contests
- assessments
- configurers
- polls
- analyzers
- toolboxes
- generators
- interactive videos
- games
- interactive infographics
- virtual reality
- augmented reality
These tools consistently occupy top spots on search rankings. Interactive tools drive more time on site and engagement than static content. It is also more effective at educating buyers than static content by 23%, according to a study by Demand Gen Report. By actively participating in a website’s interactive tools, then, visitors are given specific results in real-time that address their problems, challenges, or ideas. Some examples of leading interactive tools are Canva’s Color Palette Generator, CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer, and Digital Marketing Toolbox on Think With Google.
Interactive tools are one of the most cost-efficient content investments you can make because of their evergreen appeal. And once the content is live, it won’t require much upkeep.
Contently
Attract, Educate and Drive Leads
Interactive content is more appealing than static content in its ability to attract and educate visitors who might become future buyers. When created with your target audience in mind, interactive tools don’t just drive leads. They qualify leads by providing key information that will help you personalize your follow-up and push prospects down the funnel more efficiently.
Interactive content generates first-party audience data. Consumers who access and customize an interactive experience typically must share personal information, [providing] direct insights on their interests, preferences, and behaviors, and learn personal identification data points, which was never possible with passive content techniques.
Content Marketing Institute
Interactive tools serve multiple purposes for a brand’s marketing strategy. They boost engagement, create brand awareness, and generate leads while retaining and creating loyal customers via ongoing support and brand advocacy tools.
Here is how you can take the first steps to use one or more of these tools:
- Research to see what tools already exist and what you can use to stand out with your target audience by offering them value for their engagement
- Create a simple tool using services like Typeform and Calconic as a starting point in order to monitor and measure how your audience reacts and uses it
- Be sure to connect your tool toward a solution that can be used to answer their problem.
If you aren’t already using interactive content, it’s time to start making it part of your marketing strategy. Investing in a tool that can cut through the noise of all the content, allowing you to jump ahead of your competition and engage on a personal level with your prospects, is worth the investment.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay