Having a hard time keeping a customer engaged in your website? Here are some general tips in user-friendliness, content, and programs to capture your target audience.
So you’ve taken the first step into modernizing your business by having a website. Congratulations and welcome to the 21st century! Now that you have this uber-essential marketing collateral, it’s time to optimize it to maximize customer experience in such a way that they’ll be coming back regularly.
And the good news is: it doesn’t actually cost that much, nor does it require days or weeks of R-and-D. Sure, you will obviously get what you pay for (stick with professional outsource web design and development companies, please), but in the long run, a great website’s ROI is pretty fast.
Here are some ways to get customers to come back to your website time after time:
Improve Your Website’s Relevance
Relevance is one of the most important content marketing factors that govern websites, mostly because users don’t want to spend time out of their day sifting through irrelevant pages just to get to what they want.
Make Your Landing Pages Relevant
The landing page refers to the first page of your website that users encounter when they click on your link. Designing your pages to be easy to use is the first step, but customizing it to make engagement easier is another step you should be taking.
Customizing your landing page to cater to your user’s immediate need makes it relevant, which, in turn, places it higher on Google’s search results page. Customizing it to your users needs can be as easy as placing buttons to make it easier for them to shop, or providing concise information about the services you provide. It’s that simple, but of course, you can make it as complex and as engaging as possible (just try not to go overboard).
Showcase Your Products
Show off the best of the best of your products and services by curating a special section for them. This can take on the form of a large banner that scrolls, or even a completely separate page.
Creating a ‘best of’ section allows you to market products and services for seasonal events, promos, items that need more visibility, or products that you feel like will benefit that specific user based on their previous shopping experience.
Suggest Different Types of Content (Based on What Users Like)
Keeping your visitors interested is essential to keeping them in your website. Remember, the longer they stay on your site, the better your site looks for search engines. Keep the information in your pages concise, straight-to-the-point, and relevant for that page’s purpose.
If you’re setting up a blog, make sure that your posts are highly informative and relevant to your business and your customer’s needs (based on their previous interactions with your website).
Improve Your Website’s UI/UX
UI/UX refers to ‘User Interface/User Experience’, two important design factors that affect how a website visitor interacts with your website, and whether that interaction is positive or negative. Unique and highly personalized websites are obviously better, but how do you ensure that the UI/UX is great? Here are some ideas:
Keep Your Website Design Clean, Simple, and Efficient
In the 21st century, minimalism is the style trend that permeates everything from homes, architecture, clothing, and yes, even websites. Today’s internet users want clean designs with simple features: forget fancy chat bots and popups and just focus on leveraging proper design to highlight your products and services.
Define which products and services you want to feature and create a list that assigns these products and services from ‘needs the most attention’ to ‘needs the least attention’. In this way, you can build your website buttons, features, and page map around this list so you don’t have to rely on blinking banner ads from the 90s (seriously, stop using that).
Keep Your Website Usable, both on Mobile and on Desktop
Over 4.5 million people access the internet via a smartphone, so make sure your website has a mobile version that is easy to navigate by applying intuitive menus, concise CTA’s (call to action), and simple, but thorough, search functionality.
This should be simple enough to do if your website is already streamlined to be clean and simple, so translating that from desktop to mobile should be an easy process.
Continue to Engage Using Email Marketing
Email marketing is still one of the best tools brands have to help them engage with their customers at a more personal level. In fact, studies show that email marketing is actually 40 times more effective at creating new customers than Facebook or Twitter, a powerful statement to make in the age of Social Media!
It’s a great way to maintain their interest in your website, and can also be leveraged to entice them to return if you notice they haven’t been back in a while.
Collect User Emails
One of the best ways to collect users emails is to ask for it. Yes, those “subscribe now” buttons you see on other websites actually do work. You could also try to collect these emails by requiring new users to set up an account before they purchase, but incentivize their efforts by providing promos and special offers.
Email Newsletters to Keep Them ‘In the Know’
Newsletters are a great way to inform regular site visitors of special promos, seasonal events, or new content. Try to send them a newsletter on a consistent schedule so that subscribers know when they’ll receive it. Space out the newsletters, though; you don’t want to spam them, after all!
Another great thing about newsletters is that it makes your regular customers feel special and ‘in the know’, especially if they’ll be the first to hear about your brand’s new offers. This effectively makes your newsletter a sort of reward for subscribers and new users, making them more likely to become brand advocates. Speaking of…
Create Brand Advocates by Constantly “Rewarding” Them
Over time and as your brand’s popularity spreads, you can start cultivating ‘brand advocates’; that is, your company will start investing in highlighting certain members of your community to showcase your appreciation for them and, of course, to spread even more awareness, but on a human level.
Acknowledge Brand Advocates Personally
People love nothing more than being made to feel special, and one of the best ways to do this is to acknowledge particularly loyal customers with personal acknowledgements, whether it’s on your website, in a newsletter, or as part of your social media campaign.
Certain brands actually include their acknowledgement of loyal customers on their products: some brands will include the names of particular brand advocates in their next line of products, some will include a personalized ‘thank you’ card with purchases, and some companies will even have loyalty programs that allow them to become independent brand ambassadors. More on that in a bit.
Thank People on Social Media
Use social media to thank people directly by posting their content on your brand’s page. Feature testimonials, IG posts, and Twitter shoutouts whenever possible so you can show that your brand sees them and that you are so grateful for their continued support.
Remember, other customers are checking out your social media page, and if they see how well you treat your customers, it can be enough of an incentive for them to patronize your brand as well.
Start a Loyalty Program
Reserved for the most loyal of customers (guidelines of which you should agree on with your marketing team before launching), a loyalty program will ensure that customers will have goals to reach if they want to be part of this elite group of people.
But loyalty should be rewarded accordingly: make your loyalty program’s incentives as special as possible. Sure, huge discounts are always appreciated, but get creative! Offer early access to products, or even tours of your facility. Remember: the more personalized, the better.
