20 Quick Tips to Increase Your Website Traffic Engagement for Great ROI and Better Customer Service Solutions
Most business owners, entrepreneurs, marketers, and startups don't have enough time to focus on their customer website engagement.
NO JOKE IF YOU HAVE A BUSINESS THIS IS A PROBLEM!
It is a cold hard fact that is a hard pill to swallow if you could ever muster up the courage to ask yourself do you really have time to invest in this?
Related to this article is a video I created about customer service attached here if you want some customer engagement outside of your website:
Shout out to Design Rush with the Colorado Logo Design Agencies
adding DJM to the lineup:
Secondly, as you continue to read I’ve added another video bonus that is about 15 mins with an interview I had with an extraordinary marketing company at the end of this article.
Underneath that video, another bonus you will get is a FAQ section that may answer some of your questions faster so feel free to scroll to the bottom.
Recently created this video about customer service and customer engagement solutions and it relates quite a bit to this article. Feel free to watch it before or after reading this article.
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Honestly, most people have been looking at website traffic the wrong way.
They are more concerned about their budgets when they should be looking at the value customer engagement brings.
Of course, I did the same mistake once!
Creating awesome content without really knowing who our target audience was or what they wanted from us? This led to a waste of time, money, effort, and a stagnated website.
This was when we start digging and came across some great stats about customers experience and customer engagement:
1. 67% of customers say that their standard for good customer experience is higher than
ever before. (Salesforce)
2. 73% of customers say that one very good customer experience raises their
expectations of other companies. (Salesforce)
3. 63% of consumers say that the best brands are the ones that exceed
expectations throughout the customer journey. (Wunderman).
4. 90% of customers think it is important to receive an immediate response to a
customer support question. (Hubspot).
5. 85% of consumers won’t do business with a company if they’re concerned about its
security practices. (pwc).
However, we finally put the pieces together and came up with a pretty good plan to boost our consumer engagement, website engagement, client engagement, and digital engagement.
YES!
"It’s all about engaging your customers no matter how big or how small your website traffic numbers are."
So without further ado, get ready to put your big boy pants on and pay close attention to these tips which might likely change your websites life for good.
1. You Actually Need to Focus on Engagement and Read this Start to Finish
Now, this is going to sound silly, but most people will read, watch, and listen to audiobooks without ever starting.
Take action today! I know you've read about two other articles, listened to a podcast or even God forbid watched a bunch of YouTube videos while skip clicking through ads to keep watching.
Procrastination is your enemy.
1. Add time to your schedule to actually focus on engagement
2. If you have a team let them know about your plans to increase engagement
3. If you are not a DIY web person or have a marketing background hire an
outsourcer or an agency like ours to help you out so that you don't pull your hair out of
your skull!
Remember, the most significant factor for the growth of your website visitors is the ORIGINAL CONTENT.
Why?
While good content can make you visible to the world, bad content can leave you in limbo.
Avoid the use of any plagiarized or copied material.
"This will not only drive your visitors away but will also get you penalized by popular search engines like Google."
Try to write 100% unique and authentic content.
2. Use Data First to Qualify Web Pages Engagement Traffic
The greatest example to date I can personally share with you comes from two tenacious entrepreneurs DJM our company has worked with for over 3 years.
They are constantly innovating and have started about 5 companies if not more by the time this gets published.
Our problem was that they wanted to market to a South African audience to do a visa work program in the United States for either Trucking, Hospitality, or Nursing.
With a limited budget, our team did research and found two important data points.
A Nursing program was the highest searched google trend keyword terms
Nursing programs in the USA were in high demand from South Africans and the Philippines.
Had they not come to us or did any research they could have potentially built a landing page to service all 3 of these market segments and waisted about two-thirds of their budget on junk leads.
By using scarcity and unique targeting strategies we were able to secure 88 leads a 34% conversion rate at a $1.98 per conversion and a total budget of $300. (5800 people saw the google ads and 252 people clicked through to our custom landing page).
To see the stats visit: https://www.danieljamesmedia.com/j1warehouse-google-ads-case-study
If you would like to see their current website visit: www.j1warehouse.com
Identify KPI or goals and reason for engagement and make sure its worth it?
Figure out who your audience is, who you serve, and why they like you?
Look back at your customers and website visitors and ask who are they and how can I serve them?
Ask yourself: Why would they be on my site what are they looking for?
Real Time Website visitor tracking software:
Use SEMrush.com tool to do deeper overview research on your competitors websites to see their traffic engagement or use free tools like google trends, keyword planner, and ubersuggest.
These are the best traffic estimators that show your current customer interactions summarized and in a whole other light.
*Tell your team about this make a note to implement these tools.
Example 1 Current Blog Research:
3. Track and Test Your Pages for Results
You can’t get desired traffic engagement on your website if you stop tracking your progress.
Therefore, it's important to make a routine.
Monitor and test your website engagement every day by thoroughly checking the number of site visitors and overall page engagement.
This practice will help you make the necessary changes and keep your website engaging for the visitors. If you don’t have the time as a business owner or marketing manager I suggest having a staff member or company to do this for you and stay on top of the ball.
Check website traffic by using these tools below:
Some have been mentioned but use SEM Rush, Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Hot Jar to Track your Best Existing Customers.
Note: Beware of websites trying to sell you a website traffic checker or even an agency. Google and these tools can do it free
We actually used SEMrush to help us identify the correct audience and content to write for this article.
Lastly, google keyword planner allowed us to find high search long-tail keywords. I prefer these as there is less competition and you want to stand out.
See this quick example below and above at point 2.
Example 2 - Current Blog Research Subtopic Ideas:
4. Track Website Visitors and Give Them True Value
Now that you know a little bit about your traffic why not ask them directly what they want.
Interview your ideal customers and find out where they hang out online, what articles they like, what videos they enjoy.
Now take all of that and create value within your own site.
Here are some things you can research about your target audience:
Age
Income
Gender
Demographic
Interests
Social Media they Use
Videos they Watch
Content they Read
Places they Hangout
5. Use Video Content Correctly and Purposefully
Videos are what I call sticky content, content that keeps you engaged. Also its great for the Google search algorithm right now!
3 Simple effective ways we use video to get website engagement:
Above the content to create more customer engagement
As a popup or offer not many companies like this or do this
As an Instructional video to boost digital and client engagement
Not having a video on your website is like having a Chocolate Sunday without the Chocolate sauce :( WHAT? It just makes it taste, look and the experience 100x better with that oh so delicious sauce.
Same goes with the marriage of websites and videos.
People love to watch videos or listen to audio we are naturally lazy by default our attention span now days is laughable.
I commend you on the other hand for reading this. Your attention span must be unprecedented to the human race. Honestly congrats and thank you! You are the only reason I’ve written all this.
6. Remove the Fluff and Keep Site Visitors Focused
This is important!
Remove any unwanted or unnecessary content from your website.
If you feel that your website has any unnecessary information which is likely driving the attention of your visitors away from your website, remove it immediately!
If your customer finds this information, they will get distracted and probably leave your site without getting to the good content.
"Get clear of all futile content from your website and reduce your website bounce rate just like that!"
Once you've looked at data remove menus and places people don't like to go.
For example, if it's a landing page remove the menu and navigation and replace it with blank or calls to action.
Make calls to action fillable forms easy for your customer. The easier, the better!
7. Create Activity Within Your Digital Engagement Content
Creating activity within your content is as simple as using customer reviews, comment questions, and FAQ sections to allow your viewer to read and engage.
*At DJM we do this at the end of every video.
Honestly, I love blog content. It comes with a warning that it’s a ton of work but there is no denying that it is great for your content ranking.
Here are some easy ways to think about blogging.
Within member pages, you can create VIP programs and competitions for your customers and followers. Make sure to announce them and keep your subscribers informed.
Add a section where you show what you've done for the community or how much you donated on a monthly basis.
Use other platforms to create longer session time by leaving a teaser to your blog with a tiny url or bitly url. Both url shorteners work great!
"Elaborating on point 3, you can use other platforms to draw in longer website visits and increase your website engagement."
Most websites use the 80 20 rule. This means 80% of your website should be made of content and 20% should be geared towards selling.
Use other websites such as
Social Media sites
Podcasts
YouTube
Listing Sites (Craigslist, Yelp, and Facebook Market Place)
eCommerce Websites
Etc.
These platforms will help you reduce your website bounce rate and your website visitors will also probably stay for longer!
9. Your Own Website Traffic is Pure Gold Lets Keep it That Way
I’ve always told website design clients their content should feature the 80 20 rule from the 4-hour-work-week by Jim Collins
Believe it or not, Google Search still provides 50 - 60% organic search traffic as the source medium that create website engagement straight from the search bar. But you have to make sure that your keywords are on point because that's one of the single most important factors for your website ranking well.
We will do another article mentioning some other techniques to increase search finablity.
"Also, don’t become reliant on one platforms just because Google drives most of your website traffic doesn't mean that's all you need to win the game of engagement. "
Make sure that your site is attractive and useful enough to keep your incoming users consistent and visiting regularly.
Internal website warnings can help indicate a problem fast. Focus on session duration and bounce rate.
What's the bounce rate?
"Bounce rate is an Internet marketing term used for web traffic analysis which basically represents the percentage of visitors who enter your website and left immediately rather than interacting with other pages within the same website."
You want a bounce rate to be under 50% to know you are keeping users from dropping off. Session duration really depends on your product or service but honestly, you want a minimum of more than 3 minutes on average.
At 15+ minutes you should be crushing engagement. The higher the better. Make it a goal to keep increasing those minutes and if they drop find out why?
Be Quick to Investigate! Become the Sherlock Holmes of Your Website or Hire One.
Alternatively, if you can't crack it on your site using social media to leverage this but for Pete’s sake diversify your traffic! or you will be caught with your pants down and the social media giants won’t care to shut you down for no reason. Heck, they may even lock you out indefinitely.
I’ve personally had this happen to one of my eBay e-Commerce companies. I can tell you from experience its as close to losing a child as I’ve come, no joke!
"Platform giants control the online world and all its data. They control you if you don’t diversify. "
Social media platforms have cracked the code on customer engagement. They are phenomenal at it! They keep users on their platform for hours.
Facebook's average is 58 minutes average per user per day. YouTube has a 40-minute average. An average user spends 2 hours and 24 minutes per day on social media in 2020.
This is absurd! you should honestly have a really good reason for your users to spend more time on your site.
Who is the highest ruler of them all in the land of website content?
Engagement is the answer, engagement is king, queen, and all the above in Google's book.
These big companies have figured it out and for every minute on their site, they generate obscene amounts of money from their users.
Another factor larger companies are learning fast! Customers feel appreciated when you are being honest and true. You can't hide dishonesty or coverups. It will backfire someday so better safe now than sorry later. Talk about a PR disaster.
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"Platform giants control the online world and all its data. They control you if you don’t diversify. "
10. Create a Real Culture Cult-Like Community of Followers
Now, this sounds extreme but its really simple and important. Remember going to school and having friend groups or not having friend groups. Each of those groups had a culture and if you didn’t fit or someone else didn’t fit usually they didn’t last in that group long.
"The bond and trust that cultures bring can be game-changing."
Think about companies that have such good communities you get sucked in and love being apart of it.
To name a few: Harley Davidson, Jeep Wrangler, Golf Clubs, and Credit Card Travel Clubs. This list is extensive. Customer loyalty and customer satisfaction is really what it boils down to.
I got inspired by these customer engagement strategies in the book Built to Last based off Good to Great it talks about a cult-like culture this includes your traffic.
Jim Collins and his team spent years and years looking at S&P 500 companies that have been around for decades and then they summarized the successes and methods these companies used.
The value I got from these books we still use and have fully implemented into our company systems.
This is the order I recommend reading these books if you ever plan to use Jim Collins data-driven factors that make businesses go from good to great and last beyond your lifetime!
They are each about a 5 hour listen and are honestly some of the best resources for business owners, entrepreneurs, marketers, and for sure startups wanting growth.
You will see our team has implemented this on my site with a feature called DJM Tribe. My culture for people like you who want to grow and want to win at the game of websites and your business brand.
The Tribe sign up process is simple just add your email and contacts and it gives you access to our private email newsletter updates as well as our Private Member-Only Facebook group called DJM Tribe - Business Owners Tips and Tricks Community.
11. Avoid NaySayers and Rubbish Non-Valuable Traffic
Example story: A client who approached me and asked me to make his website so that it wouldn't attract an opposing political party to his website. What?
At first, I thought this is crazy then I realized this is genius.
The bottom line: If you are focused on one demographic or interest get those people only!
Ways you can implement this:
Identify who you want and who you don’t.
Add titles and keywords with images that talk to the right person and keep the wrong people out.
Market to your audience only and exclude the rest.
Use exclusion filters in Google Analytics. (Let your team implement this).
12. Allow Your Traffic to Interact
Use widgets and opportunities for your customer base to contribute I know comments are one form but think larger scale think open source.
I once ran a community course site where collaborators or site visitors would help spell check and edit the content.
This was super helpful as now the audience was creating the content engagement without me lifting a finger. Your Audience knows what they want just let them add that value for you.
13. The Customer is Always Right So Listen
Now, this one is tough to hear but they are right and kiss will be your biggest help here. Keep it Simple Stupid.
Also use the L.A.S.T method when customers make complaints on your sites functionality or engagement UX (user experience) issues.
Listen - Really listen to the concern and be an active listener and zip your lip
Apologize - Sincerely acknowledge and apologize for the service at hand
Solve - Identify the solution to the functionality with reassurance that it will be solved
Thank - Thank the customer for the valuable feedback so they know you care
You don't have to bow to every wish they make and be careful of those customers who like to take advantage.
Bottom line you are still in business to put bread on the table or what ever else you buy with the money you earn. Customers need attention so engage!
14. Building Trust and Honesty are Powerful Never Lose it Ever!
How do you build trust to allow longer engagement?
This is how: Share a story on with a non sales like approach high-value approach like a giveaway that’s great value to your customers.
Acknowledge every user instead of seeing them as numbers.
Get to know them if you have to and sit down with a sample group may be 10-20 or more customers to add that value to your highest paying or loyal customers.
"News will spread that you are being real and engaging when you put effort to meet your audience with where they are at."
15. Be the Tortoise, Not the Hare
Cute image, right, we tailored this for the viewing pleasure of your eyeballs.
The hare sprints but runs out of capacity. The same is true for that new idea you are chasing versus a model that generates your constant proven income.
"Stick to what works and don’t change it! Super important."
This is a long term race and even at step 15 only a few of you have made it this far and I commend you for doing that, so bear with me to understand this timeless tip!
As a person and a business sometimes we want immediate results and success. The truth however is that the long term race of content ranking is strongly related to time online.
You can always revisit the content and make it better over time I prefer quality over quantity which boils down to customer service and serving clients with value.
"More often than not a competitor is less likely to beat your content engagement if their content isn’t quality or targeted."
16. Create Consistency with your Content Engagement
Have a schedule with your content or email marketing to make it concise and valuable once again 80 20. In the website, consistency is the key to progress.
If you are not consistent in uploading and updating your content, you can’t go any further in the Google and other search engines. And it will also become difficult for you to take a position on the search engines. So, make sure to be consistent, make a schedule, and follow it strictly!
The best recommendation is about 1 piece of content a week that can be multi-purpose maybe a 15min video that you can turn into a blog, podcast, book chapter, and even social media posts that are spread out by the highlights of that video.
Highlight 1 Title Accompanied by an Image (Use copyright-free images) I like to use Envato Elements and for a free resource you can use Pixabay or canvas to create posts.
17. Use Movement Look Different to Allow Visitors to Drool
Movement is one of my favorite engagers and we use it though-out the DJM Site.
Popout movement elements
Gifs
Short repeater videos that flow with the content
Parallax effects
Arrows for direction or shapes that draw the eye
Horizontal direction like Lamborghini site one of my favorite sites of all time
Header bar videos top of page
Audio walk throughs that are phenomenal
Sliders that are attractive and purposeful
This list could go on and on use creativity and figure some out and add them to the comments below and we will add it to this article.
18. Increase Your Websites Loading Speed and Make More DollHairs
Amazon loses 1% of its revenue gross for every second its loading speed is slow. Hire a professional to do this as it is super hard to keep up with.
Simple steps for your loading speed developer to improve your sites speed:
> Enable cache
> Enable gzip compression
> Database optimization
> JavaScript optimization
> CSS optimization
> Optimize images
> Remove unnecessary code and plugins
To check your loading speed install and use Google Search Console.
Other site loading speed tips and ideas:
Google load speed use this tool. Google AMP framework use this tool so that it will load super fast. Use a CDN Content delivery network. Replicate the site and put it in those regions. Cache your website W3 Total Cache using WordPress.
19. Where you Don't Succeed Cut Simplify or A/B Split Test
Sometimes looking at 1 page isn't going to get you anywhere. This is when I like to A and B split test and experiment with my audience to see what keeps engagement.
"If we are honest with ourselves we can’t predict what image, video, landing page or piece of content our followers will resonate with."
SO STOP GUESSING! Just A, B, and sometimes F test your theories.
For the most part, we are going to be wrong when guessing.
Go into analytics and see what engagement has converted or held longer session duration times. Then look at that page and ask yourself why?
Find out why then follow that up with using that knowledge to add its reasoning to other pages.
20. Save The Best for Last and More
This is so, so valuable and I saved it for last. I first picked up this concept in a book called the Launch book by Jeff Walker.
In one of his chapters, he talks about the reasons customers buy from you and the reasons they don’t.
Read this chapter and comment on your thoughts on this post or even share it with your team and have them comment on this post.
This book alone has generated my company thousands in revenue with understanding phycology and funnels. As a business owner, you need to have known this yesterday already.
My favorite on his list is scarcity and time.
These two mixed can generate out of this world engagement for courses, products, and services that you are limiting.
Quick success story:
I personally know of a photographer who used this in her course sales and made $550 000 in one week with a time limit sale of one week only.
She repeated this one final time that same year and made $1 Million from that course in a year.
Now she did work 90 hours a week to accomplish this for a total of 6 months and her business took 3 years to be ready to launch the course.
Want more juicy bits from this article?
Now, I know this content didn't cover any tips on how to get more website traffic or what mediums to use to gain traffic in depth like budget and cost. However I thought I would also save the best for last and add some FAQ questions we get a lot and give you a few short answers to each of these so check it out!
Also as a bonus here is a YouTube video interview I did with Zova Marketing for their show called Marketing Tip Tea Time at 2:22. I covered some basics on Website Engagement and Maximizing your Website, definitely worth digesting and taking away some other tips away that I don't mention in the blog.
Also once again here is that customer experience video relating to the article above.
Bonus Video with Zova Marketing's Show Marketing Tea Time at 2:22
To watch the video on their Facebook page click here or below.
Answer All Your Burning Questions:
(FAQ) Frequently Asked Engagement Questions?
These are Some Great Bonus Questions we get a lot that we just answered right here:
Q. How to increase user engagement on my website?
A. Read this article. That's as straight as the first answer will get: https://www.danieljamesmedia.com/post/site-traffic-engagement
Q. Strategies for engaging your visitors?
A. Read tips 4 to 14 in the article above.
Q. What makes a visitor stay and revisit a website?
A. Great value is the number 1 reason they come back and trust is second consistency is 3rd.
Q. What is considered good website traffic?
A. The website traffic that will either do an activity or purchase a product or become a raving fan and refer to others. Everything else is just window shopping you only want the best traffic that relates to your website.
Q. How to increase traffic to a new website? or how to increase organic search traffic to my site?
A. This is a whole other blog in itself. You can use multiple methods but first find your niche then your audience and who they are and what platforms they will be. Next, implement a marketing and content strategy if you can't do it alone hire an agency like ours that you can talk to. A few places to get traction Blogging, Podcasts, YouTube (long-term Strategy), Google my Business if you are local google ads, Facebook ads, and LinkedIn ads if you have a budget. I recommend 5%-15% of gross business income. If you aren't profitable you will need to do organic methods. Lastly one of my favorites is to partner with influencers in your space who are already successful and do a joint venture. Doing things alone is a failed strategy long term.
Q. How to measure the traffic source of the website? or What free tools show organic traffic of websites?
A. Tip 3. Use these tools to do deeper overview research at other companies to see their traffic engagement SEMrush.com or use free tools like google trends, keyword planner, and ubersuggest.
Q. How to get quality traffic to my website on a low budget?
A. A few places to get traction Blogging, Podcasts, YouTube (long-term Strategy), Google my Business if you are local. Reddit and social media platforms will yield results and finally doing SEO yourself can help but it is very intensive and not suggested. Lastly, you can do public speaking or networking but only at high-quality events with the right people.
Q. How to improve the bounce rate in SEO?
A. Make your content sticky by making the first thing you see engaging like your home page. Add a video that auto-plays that is informational and not too long. Alternatively, educate, train, and inform with good content and stats. Bounce rate and Improving customer engagement plays a big part and actually needed its own section in this article. Well, next time ;p.
Q. What is the best SEO tool?
A. In my opinion, nothing beats SEM Rush, we use it for all our clients in house we run reports every day including competitor and keyword reports non stop. Alternatively free I would suggest Google Keyword Planner, Google Search Console, and Google Trends. Don't use sites that try piggie back off google products they charge way too much. If you want a free resource that not as powerful as SEM Rush but somewhat close, you can use Ubersuggest however it's not as in-depth.
Special thanks to SEMrush SEO tools that made this blog possible!
Thanks again for pushing though and I look forward to any questions you have in the comments.
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Sincerely DJM
