The attention spans of internet users are growing shorter and shorter, so we as business owners need to take every possible opportunity to maintain their interest. The first step to achieving this is engaging them with a website that is appealing to both the eyes and the mind. We have outlined 8 of the most important factors that affect user engagement on your website:
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Content - the content of your website needs to be easy to find and useful to the user. We have actually split the content up into sub-categories to show just how important each is to the engagement of a webpage:
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Text – the copy needs to be broken up into sections, paragraphs and even dot points. This will make it much easier to read (remember that internet users often scan) and will also be more visually appealing.
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Video – this will engage your users in two ways. Firstly, the sound of the human voice will make the content seem more meaningful. Secondly, the movement will grab their attention and give them reason to pause.
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Images – this is a great way to grab a user’s attention. Professional photos are far more appealing than ones taken on your smartphone, and the pictures should not be so big that they take minutes to load.
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Infographs – this has been a relatively new addition to websites, but is a great way to visually get your point across. An infograph combines text and images to explain a particular topic or show how to do something.
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Design - we can’t emphasise enough the important of having an exceptional, modern web design. This will ensure that the site, as a whole, is visually appealing and will encourage users to delve further. The colours used should reflect your brand, but should do so without detracting from the purpose of the site. The layout should be organised and draw attention to the important parts.
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Speed - Believe it or not, the time it takes for your website to load will also affect user engagement. Large image files, lots of embedded images, animation and heavy backgrounds all lead to the page taking longer to load. These days, if a user has to wait longer than a few seconds they are likely to click away.
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CMS - Whilst your content management system (CMS) does not have a direct impact on the user engagement of your website, if it is not easy to use or takes too long to make changes, you will find that all of the above elements will be lacking. A custom, well-designed CMS will allow you to make changes to the content that will better draw in your users.
Improve the user engagement on your website by ensuring that the content and design has been generated with your users in mind (so, it is appealing and provides them with useful information), that the pages load as quickly as possible, and that your CMS allows you to make changes easily. A website created by the team at Zeemo will provide you with all these things – and more!
