Engagement

More engagement doesn’t always mean more conversions.

One of the biggest mistakes site owners make when they are first starting out is focusing on high traffic volume as a way to make sales.

While there is definitely nothing wrong with high amounts of traffic, if you are not looking at the right engagement factors it can be a curse rather than a blessing.

Think of your engagement to conversion rate as a recipe- more ingredients are not necessarily going to get you a better product. It’s all about getting just the right balance of ingredients that will lead you to the highest conversions.

Common Mistakes When it Comes to Engagement

Too Many Options: here is another case where less is more. When users have too many places to click, they become confused and potentially end their quest through your sales funnel right then and there. Give your customer choices, but not too many choices. When they come to your home page or first point of preference, keep the path that you want them to follow lit up like a beacon.

Slow Site Speed: If your pages are loading slow chances are your customers are going to get frustrated and close the page. In takes only seconds to lose customer engagement online, so run a site speed checker frequently and remove any slow-loading features.

Social Sharing: Studies have shown that when you offer more sharing options such as a link to Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and LinkedIn, users are less likely to share than if you only offer two options. This is another classic example of less is more. When you offer too many choices, the most likely action from your customers is to not take any action.

Site Interactivity: When you have many things to interact with on your page, or you offer too many moving graphics, images and sounds, users can become distracted and move away from what you want them to do. Stick with your intention- what point are you trying to get across? A good example here are the Google Doodles which, studies have confirmed waste hours of productivity.

Case Study

Lets look at two similar companies- Hotels.com and Airbnb.com. They bother offer accommodation services around the world and they are both comparatively priced.

airbnb

As you can see, out of 6.01 million unique hits, 68.79% of Airbnb customers view a listing and 5.97% of them convert into a sale.

Hotels.com however, has 87.99 million unique hits. Does that make their conversion rate higher?

hotels.com

As you can see, 74.38% of people view a listing, which is more than Airbnb, yet only 2.95% of them make a booking.

This is a great example of how high traffic doesn’t necessarily mean better conversions.

Engagement Done Right

Engagement factors are slightly different depending on whether you are looking at a Landing Page, Website or Social Media.

Landing Page: Good engagement on a landing page is measured by the number of clicks on the form field and whether your customers have signed up, downloaded or successfully completed your desired goal.

If your conversion are low, start with asking yourself the following questions:

  • Why did I create this page?
  • What am I trying to get out of my users?

These two questions will help you keep on track with your landing page’s purpose. Having an unbiased friend or expert look at your page is also beneficial. Ask them to visit your page and then record what they learnt about your service or product and what they felt compelled to click.

Remove any elements that don’t encourage a conversion and if you have a lot of interactivity on your page, focus on making it memorable rather than distracting.

Website: A key metric here is not necessarily your unique hits but more your bounce rate and how many pages your customers are looking at. If users are exiting your site, think of ways that you can engage them to stick around. Chances are the most common reason your users are bouncing is because there are too many options on the page. Aim to create a clean looking site and consider removing your sidebar or other unnecessary distractions on the page. You will have to test different things out here in order to see what works for your site.

Social Media: The number of likes, shares, comments and retweets are all good indicators of how engaged your audience is. Building relationships with your followers is paramount. To ensure higher engagement, make sure you actually respond to all comments and share a variety of content from articles to images and even just status updates. This will help personalise your business more.

One simple way to increase social media engagement is by sharing images with quotes or memes. This has been proven time and time again to increase the number of likes and shares on your accounts. While users are not likely to click on anything other than the “like” or “retweet” button, both Facebook and Twitters algorithm will clock it as engagement, which will help all your posts reach more people.

Brand: Engagement between your brand and consumers is measured by customer loyalty and repeat purchases. When it comes to optimising your brand, you may have to strategise a little more on what works for you. The goal here should be to nurture the customer relationship while still encouraging them to purchase. Usually when you have a big brand, you can focus less on conversion rates and more on building a relationship and creating a unique user experience.

If you want to increase your conversion rates, the bottom line is that you have to know which metrics matter most for your company. Measure how people move through your funnel and find the common spots that people stop moving or drop out. Then keep testing different strategies until you have the perfect recipe.