Having a website is an absolute must for most any viable business nowadays. But, merely having a business website doesn’t do you any good if the only visitors that see it are your mom and some spambots from Russia. And since pretty much anybody with 10 bucks and an idea (well, let’s be honest, the idea doesn’t even really matter that much if you’ve got the 10 bucks!) can have or already has a website, getting viewers to go to your website (and purchase your offerings) amongst all of the other online competition can be a real challenge, here are 3 ways to help your business boost engagement with your website:
(1) Get Your Company Name and Web Address Out There
Do absolutely everything that you can think of to get your company name and website out there! Start with old school methods like handing out business cards, pens or other promotional items with your company information to people everywhere that you go, from specific networking events to your local dry cleaners or daily barista at Starbucks. You’ll be surprised at how something as simple as a branded pen can get your website out there. And since your real goal here is to get customers to go to your website (and ultimately, purchase from you), make sure to advertise online as well, since it’s easier to get them to go to a website once they are already online. Utilize social media networks and comment or advertise on other blogs, websites, forums and news pages where the types of customers that would purchase from you would be visiting.
(2) Capture and Keep Their Interest
It’s not enough to get someone to visit your website one time. In order to turn that one hit into a repeat visitor and customer, you have to capture and keep their interest. To do this, update your content and offerings frequently. Fresh content and offerings allow not only visitors, but also search engines (like Google and Yahoo!) to have more ways to find your website. Switch it up; rotate between posting interesting videos, blogs, studies and articles often. Have others relevant to your website visitors guest post and then, you can cross-promote between your audiences. If you sell products or services, update your offerings with other complementary add-ons and new products or services, so that once someone has purchased from you, they have a reason to come back and purchase more. Make sure that you have a way to get their contact information, through a newsletter sign-up form, so that you can alert and remind them when you have a reason for their return. Be consistent with this and it will definitely increase the amount of website visitors and sales that you get.
(3) Give to Get
Everyone loves free, so another great tip for getting more website attention is to give away something of value for free. Make sure that the giveaway is something of interest to your specific visitors, because again, the whole purpose of this is to attract visitors to your website. So, if you sell auto parts, it probably makes sense to give away something car related, rather than something related to pets. This can be a contest of sorts, where everyone that takes a specific action, like signing up for your newsletter, gets entered to randomly win the giveaway. But, you can also run a more inclusive promotion, where everyone that takes a specific action automatically gets a free chapter from your upcoming book or free shipping with their purchase. The more valuable the giveaway and the fewer hoops that you make visitors jump through to participate, the more website attention you will get.
What other tips do you have to boost website engagement? Please share them below.
Thanks to Janet Christy of Leverage & Development, LLC, Emily Carter of Grass Roots Marketing, Becky Boyd of MediaFirst, and Drew Cassels of Credit Cards Canada for the inspiration behind some of these ideas.
