Your web design will determine if your target audience is compelled to read, watch, scroll, or click around. A good web design will buy you time to communicate your business’s products to your cyberspace visitors. On the other hand, a bad web design will rob you of time to inform potential customers about your service, leaving them no choice but to hit the back button and find another business.
It’s a well-known web design fact that an aesthetically pleasing page is not only nice to have, it’s essential these days. But are well-designed layouts and eye-pleasing color schemes the only factors that lead to website user retention? What turns an internet onlooker into an engaged user? How do you convert an indifferent stranger into a brand loyal client through your website? Here are five tips to help your business retain users.
Clutter Removal
A landmine of annoying advertisements, pictures that add nothing to the content, and massive, novel-length paragraphs turn away your target audience. A rule of thumb: If it’s not necessary, ditch it. It’s an all-too-common internet experience to endure website loading time, only to find an assault of ads a user must close. You have only a few seconds to grab the attention of your potential customers.
Don’t make the task of winning their attention any more difficult by adding extra work for them. Pictures that are too big, too busy, or unrelated to the content you are presenting will only serve as distractions. Large paragraphs are discouraging and laborious, so add white space by breaking up those essay-long blocks of text into concise sentences.
Customer Engagement
Make your potential customers participants, not just an audience. Give them the option to leave comments, take polls, play games, or see a video. Involving a potential customer with your website fuses the connection between the customer and the brand. Engage your potential clients by welcoming them into a community, rather than just communicating information.
User Interface Transition
Here are the main ingredients of a good website – attractive appearance and user-friendly navigation. User interface will help with the latter. Don’t waste a beautiful website by creating a difficult navigation experience. Employ best practices for user interface and user experience (UI/UX) design.
Brand Involvement
Consider getting Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook pages and include their icons with clickable links on your website. This will give your target audience a way to share your brand with others, which will build your website traffic and, ultimately, help promote retention.
Social media also provides a way to interact with your target audience through their comments. It’s important to acknowledge your customers’ voices so they feel their opinions are valued.
Special Offer Promotion
Offer a usable resource in exchange for contact information. For example, provide a free downloadable e-book after a potential customer fills out a contact information form. The contact information will give you an additional lead while communicating to your target audience your willingness to follow up with their needs. And who doesn’t like free stuff?
