Most business owners in 2021 will agree that a website is a crucial factor in building a successful business. With 25% of people shopping online at least once a week, the growth of ecommerce is inevitable.

For your company website to compete in the ecommerce space, it must be easy to navigate, have mobile functionality, and include SEO integration. It must also have a low bounce rate, a strong UX design, and work well on any mobile device.

For almost a decade, Brandastic has worked on hundreds of sites, and have developed 15 unique methods of increasing page views, creating brand trust, and growing online sales.

Here are the best ways to help your visitors stay engaged on your site.

1) Appealing Images

The Social Science Research Center discovered that 65% of people are visual learners. This means that they resonate with the visual aspects of a site first.

Thanks to sites like Instagram and Pinterest, the visual element is crucial for engagement on a website today. Images of people are the most appealing, as well as pictures of products and environments that can give a feeling of what your business offers.

The more visual elements, the more believable your website content becomes. Adding visual examples wherever you can will help to grow engagement.

2) Readable Fonts

The words on your site matter, but only if they are readable. This is especially true on a mobile platform, where many people are using smaller screens. When in doubt, as a few people if the font on your website is readable, and if not, enlarge it.

3) Dynamic Content

Technology and web development have allowed websites to have a lot of moving pieces. However, if you feel like you are being bombarded with too much information you will click away. The key is to find a balance between being innovative and useful. As with most things, simplicity is key.

4) Color Schemes

Color is a very big influencer of mood and tone. You must ensure that the colors you choose match the brand voice you have chosen. To help with this, you can use this guide to the psychology of colors to better understand what works for your brand.

5) Mobile Enabled

In 2020, over 50% of web traffic is generated by mobile devices. This statistic means for any business to be competitive in the modern market, it must have a website that is mobile-enabled. To check if your site is optimized for mobile, you can use tools like the Google Mobile-Friendly Test.

6) Accelerated Mobile Pages

The speed of access is hugely important when accessing the web. Most users will spend less than 3 seconds on a page that does not load. To help increase the speed of web pages, Google has encouraged the use of AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages).

AMP pages are essentially deconstructed web pages that only present the necessary information to the visitor. Incorporating the AMP code into your site can also potentially increase the SERP results for your site.

7) Resizing Images

Because the mobile site view is much smaller than the typical desktop view, your images should be too. By resizing the dimensions of the images to proper specifications to ensure a smooth loading page.

A good rule of thumb is to have all images at less than 7MB in size, to ensure faster loading on your website. Using an image compression tool can help to keep the quality high and also reduce the loading times on your site.

8) Accurate Keywords

Keywords are exact word groupings that people type into Google to find your type of business.

The more you incorporate terms that relate to your business on your site, the easier it will be for people to find it.

Doing accurate keyword research will help to ensure you are incorporating the correct terms into your website, and are an essential part of any website engagement strategy.

9) Relevant, Updated Content

You’ve probably heard the digital marketing mantra that ‘content is king’. But while it is important to have good content for your website visitors to read, watch, and consume, it must be the right content.

By understanding the needs of your customers, you have a much better chance of writing and sharing useful content on your site. Over time, this will attract the right people who want to buy from you.

But at the same time, having updated relevant content will encourage the search engines to better index your website. Regularly update sites have an increased crawl budget from the web crawlers and will get indexed more often. Website engagement depends on your site offering the right content that people are looking for. 

10) Title Tags

In SEO terms, the Title Tag is the title of the post that Google reads and shares in the search results. By making sure it is optimized and shows what the web page is about, you are more likely to get visitors that want to know more.

11) Meta Description

The other component of great SEO is the Meta Description, which helps the search engines to know what the page is about. It also helps visitors because a portion of the meta description is displayed in the search results.

12) Alt Text for Images

One element of search engine optimization which is often overlooked is the images. Google cannot quite understand what an image represents, so by adding ‘alt text’ to the image it helps it rank better in a search. Alt-text is also used for individuals with vision impairments that use screen readers, so it is a very important function for search engines. Having all your images and infographics optimized helps to attract the right target audience.

13) Social Media Presence

There’s no point arguing with trends: if you don’t have a Facebook or Instagram account for your business, you’re already falling behind. Many business owners feel like social media is a waste of time. However, it can prove to be a strong source of web traffic when used correctly. Visitor engagement is also higher if they are following you on social media platforms. 

14) Guest Blogging

One key to more traffic is to think about where else you can post and share valuable ideas outside your own website. You can write for other websites that  have related content that is also interesting to your target audience.

If you have some industry expertise, guest blogging can be a powerful tool to help grow your traffic your site. By sharing your ideas on sites that have a lot of attention, and linking back to your own site, you direct traffic (and the search engines) back to your own website. Over time, the more backlinks you have, the more trust and authority your website will accumulate.

15) Blog Commenting

Another technique that can be effective for creating backlinks is to share your thoughts and insights as comments on other people’s posts. On sites like Quora, this can also lead to more traffic and authority for your own page if done well.

These 15 marketing and web development ideas will help to increase website traffic, reduce bounce rate, and create higher engagement for your website.

Keeping it up to date, secure, and helpful for your audience will ensure that people continue to visit and purchase from your company. Even in 2021, a company website is still a crucial asset that takes time and effort to create and maintain. However, the pay off is well worth the investment.

Brandastic is a Digital Marketing agency with offices in Orange County, Los Angeles, and Austin. We help build world-class brands and can help you grow your web presence and sales through our online marketing, social media marketing, and branding strategy. Contact us today to get started growing your business online.