How interactive is your website?
If your website isn’t interactive, visitors are just passively skimming it and not sticking around for long. So, do you want to learn how to make it more interactive, so people stay on your site longer and engage with you and your content?
Your website is an important part of your marketing strategy, so it’s essential to make sure you’re encouraging people to interact with it as much as possible.
Engaged visitors will come to your site often, subscribe to your email newsletter, buy your products, and share your message with their networks.
Let’s explore the benefits that come with building more engaging experiences for your visitors through these seven ways you can make your website more interactive.
1. Encourage Social Sharing
We all know the value of sharing your content through social sharing buttons on all of your blog content and product pages. This way, if someone comes to your site and loves your content, they can easily share it with their networks and thereby interact with your brand.
You can easily add social sharing buttons to your site with a WordPress plugin like Shared Counts. This plugin not only displays how many times your content has been shared, but also includes sharing buttons to encourage more engagement.
Remember, it’s also essential to engage with fans and followers on social media. Many brands sign up for accounts on all the platforms and then do nothing with them. People like it when brands interact with them online, as it shows you’re listening to them.
2. Add Quizzes, Surveys, and Polls
Encourage people to interact with your website through online surveys and quizzes.
People love quizzes and usually don’t mind taking a minute to fill one out. Plus, it will help decrease your website bounce rate since they’ll be on your site for longer, and if you ask for their email before revealing the results, you’ve got a bonus way of growing your email list.
You can use a form plugin like WPForms to create engaging quizzes, surveys, and polls. With it, you can create polls and display the results in real-time on your site or create surveys that dynamically change based on people’s responses.
Surveys and polls not only make your site more interactive, but you can also use them to understand the needs of your potential customers and get feedback on how you’re doing.
3. Use Gamification
Gamification is a psychological trick that website owners and marketers use to improve the interactiveness of their sites and increase conversions.
Combining the fun of a game with the lead generating magic of an opt-in form or a coupon opt-in form makes your site more fun. People will want to see what happens when they spin the discount wheel, but they’ll only find out once they enter their email.
You can create a coupon wheel opt-in form easily with OptinMonster and customize it to your offer, your brand style, and more. Or, use one of their professionally-designed coupon wheel templates to get up and running more quickly.
4. Suggest Relevant Links
Once a visitor is reading one of your blog posts, your goal is to keep them on your website. Do this by showing relevant content within each of your posts that let visitors navigate easily to other articles on your blog. Seeing a link to an article that promises further information about the same topic encourages readers to click on the second link even more.
The best place to do this is within the post itself and at the end of each one. HostGator recommends content in two ways at the end of their blog posts. First, by relevant subject, then by publication date, both of which are another way to leverage links to their content to deliver a ton of value to readers.
5. Invite Conversations
Many site owners don’t see the importance of complete contact details and omit it entirely. They figure the information on the site is enough and there’s no need for people to contact them (or they’re trying to hide from complaints, but that’s another story.)
Don’t be afraid to talk to your visitors. Publish your contact information openly on your website and show the world you’re available and open to feedback. Don’t forget to list all the ways you want people to be able to reach you.
Here, Constant Contact lists their office locations and the contact details for them, their main toll-free telephone number appears on every page, and visitors can choose a team to contact if they have a specific question.
Another way you can invite conversations with your site visitors is to encourage comments on your blog. Write engaging calls to action (CTAs) at the end of every post and invite them to tell you their thoughts on the subject. Respond to their comments and increase the interaction even more.
6. Publish User-Generated Content
Let people interact with you directly by incorporating user-generated content on your website. Doing this signals that people’s time and effort at contributing is appreciated and valued, incentivizing them to engage with you even more. They’ll share more of your content, buy more of your products, and evangelize you to their networks.
There are several ways to display user-generated content on your website, including writing articles based on comments from your blog and showcasing social media posts and images of customers with your products.
Be sure to encourage your site visitors to submit their user-generated content and make it easy for them to do so as well.
Here’s how Lululemon does it:
Another way to create user-generated content is to show off your happy customers on a testimonials page. They’re a secret way of publishing more user-generated content, and they give you more insights into how they view your products and brand, while also acting as social proof for you.
7. Run a Giveaway
People love prizes, which is why many websites use giveaways to boost interaction. You can offer a free product or service in exchange for someone’s email address. The giveaway helps people get to know you and your business, making it easier to convert them into a paying customer in the future.
RafflePress has easy templates you can use to create your giveaway, and they look good on desktop and mobile devices. Embed your giveaway on your site or create a customized landing page for it to get the best results.
This giveaway tool also offers verified bonus actions that can help skyrocket audience engagement. Users can perform certain tasks like answering a poll, watching a YouTube video, or following you on Twitter, to receive extra giveaway entries.
Make Your Website More Interactive Today
With all the content available online, customer interactions are increasingly valuable to websites and businesses. Use these tips to make your website more interactive and encourage people to comment on your posts, click on surveys and quizzes, and share their thoughts and feedback.
Try out a few of these to start and see which encourages customers to stay on your site more. You’ll create a more interactive experience online and learn more about your audience at the same time.
Syed Balkhi is the founder of WPBeginner, the largest free WordPress resource site. With over 10 years of experience, he’s the leading WordPress expert in the industry. You can learn more about Syed and his portfolio of companies by following him on his social media networks.