Don’t underestimate the value of keeping your visitors on your website for longer. The longer, the more likely they’re going to become a customer of yours. So, start focusing on your website engagement – these little tricks will help you convert more sales.
Take advantage of Google Analytics
First things first. If you use Google Analytics, you can measure your audience engagement. Go to Audience->Behaviour->Engagement and you will get a very useful report similar to this:
If most of your visitors stay on your website for less than 10 seconds, or read no more than 1 page, you can turn this around.
1. Recommend similar content
Ever been on a very popular blog or news website? At the bottom of each article, there is always a “Also recommended:” or “Related posts:” or “Read more:” area. Simple as that: if your visitor is reading some content, why not suggesting something similar?
If you use WordPress, there are hundreds of plugins you can install – we recommend “YARPP”. Otherwise, if your website is small, you can also doing it manually – at the end of each page add a few links to similar content.
2. Don’t link to other websites
It’s already hard to drive traffic to your own website – so why should you tempt the visitor to go away? Unless it is a relevant link, avoid to move users somewhere else.
It happens a lot with business websites that resell some bigger brand’s stock. Don’t link to your wholesaler’s website, simply ask them to give you a PDF catalogue so then your visitors can download it from your website.
3. Split long webpages
By default, users don’t really read your content. They “scan” it. So, stop annoying your visitors: why not to split your long text content into multiple pages? In this way, interested visitors will keep reading, the others will move on to another section of your website.
If you use WordPress Content Management System, simply add a “read more” button from your editor kitchen sink. Otherwise, you can do it manually: split the content in two or 3 pages, with a link at the bottom that redirects to the next or previous page.
4. Use slideshows and videos
No surprise. Why not to embed a slideshow of your sales pitch or a video tutorial? Anything that is no text – and the user will love it. You probably don’t know that youtube.com has a blog page with lots of tutorials and articles – to be honest that page’s engagement must be close to 0%!
You can create slideshows and videos very easily yourself, or getting them done professionally. Better a good quality video that one that nobody is going to watch – so plan this very carefully.
5. Most popular content
Similarly to the “Also recommended:” widget, why not to suggest the most popular page or product of your website? This is also a good tip to redirect your website traffic to the product or service that you want to sell the most.
Again, WordPress and other Content Management Systems have automatic installable plugins – but you can always do it yourself. Decide which one is the most important page and link to it on every page of your website!