10 Proven Ways to Increase Visitor Engagement on your E-Commerce Website

What is Visitor Engagement?

Internet is vast and people browsing the internet have a very short attention span. When someone lands on your website for the first time and does not see anything they are interested in, they will leave and most likely never come back. These people could have been your potential customers but your website was unable to engage them with whatever content it had to offer. Visitor engagement refers to a website's ability to attract and engage a site visitor for a longer period of time so you have the opportunity to offer more and turn them into potential customers. Offering exciting and engaging content is the most obvious way to retain website visitors but it is also very hard to create such content on an ongoing basis. The strategy for increasing engagement on an e-commerce website should use a combination of proven techniques so one can drive more traffic from repeat visitors and also add new visitors to that list. Below I am outlining some of the steps that have worked on a variety of websites that have been successful at increasing their conversion rates.

1. Add a Blog

This may seem like an obvious one but often overlooked by most businesses. I have seen so many websites that have a blog section that hasn't been updated in months or even years. Just adding a blog is not sufficient, one needs to add new and interesting articles to the blog regularly to get the desired results.

People like to read, so if you are able to provide interesting and helpful articles for them to read then the chances are high that they will spend more time on your website. The trick here is to be helpful, knowledgeable and interesting. Use images and videos to make your articles more exciting if possible. Add links to the resources referenced in the article to support the factual material within your articles.

Having a blog is a great way to engage users on your website. Small businesses with blogs get 126% more lead growth than small businesses without according to the Content Marketing Institute. Regular blogging is a go to content marketing strategy for a reason, because it works!

2. Capture E-Mail Addresses

Even if you engage visitors with a few interesting content options, how do you bring these visitors back to your website again? One proven way to do that is through email marketing. While the site visitors are engaged on your website you must use that opportunity to offer more in exchange of their email addresses. You can do so by using one of the following techniques:

• Promotional Offers
  You can create various offers and promotions and present them using timed popups while the user is engaged on your website. Making these offers relevant to the area where the user is spending time is going to get their attention. Ask the users to enter their email address to receive the offer in their emails.
• E-Book Downloads
  E-books are a great way to offer free education on any topic. The visitors need to provide their email address to receive the download link in their email.
• Discount Coupons
  Create discount coupons that have a limited validity. These discount coupons can be offered anywhere on the site and can also appear in exit intent popups. These popups show up right when the user is about to leave the site. Ask for email addresses so you can email the coupon codes to them.
• Birthday, Anniversary Offers
  Offer birthday and anniversary gifts, coupons and discounts to encourage website visitors to provide their email addresses and event dates. You can email them your offers on the specified dates to get their attention and bring them back to your site.
• Subscribe to Blog
  When users are spending time on your blog then it indicates that they like reading the articles on your blog. Give them a way to subscribe to your blog so they can be notified when new articles are published.
• Giveaways
  Offering a chance to win certain prize can be quite encouraging to website visitors for them to provide their email addresses.

3. Add a Chat

Adding a chat to your website can increase the user engagement by offering them a way to connect with you and ask questions about your product. It could be challenging to be available at all times to answer their questions in real time. There are plenty of free or paid chat software available to overcome this challenge. Many website chat software use chatbot technology to present a series of alternatives when a real human is unavailable to chat. This in fact also helps collect email addresses from your site's visitors. When they have questions and you are unavailable to chat in real time, the chatbot software can encourage the visitor to leave their email address so you can get back to them later.

4. Add a Quiz or Poll

Add a quiz or a poll on your e-commerce website to engage the users. This can also serve as a helpful survey in gathering more information about what your audience cares about. Attaching these quizzes to some sort of contest or free giveaway offer will encourage the users to spend more time and answer the questions. Quizzes and polls are becoming increasingly common on social media sites and a lot of people participate in these based on their interest areas.

5. Interactive Product Demos

Imagine being on an online shopping website yourself. As you browse the products and see something you are interested in, you want to see more of it. The more information you have the more confident you feel about buying that product online. Some of the following media assets really help increase user engagement and also helps the buyer make an informed purchase decision:

1. Multiple product images with an ability to zoom into these images to see a closer image of the product.
2. One or more product videos that shows more aspects of how to assemble or use the product with some real life examples.
3. Detailed product specification sheets, user manuals or any other kind of documentation.
4. Interactive 360 degree views of the product with the ability to zoom in and out.

6. Product Reviews

Having product reviews for each product builds trust and confidence. Every product must invite reviews from the buyers and also show verified purchases along side. This also increases user engagement and people like to research a product before making a decision to buy it. Reading reviews associated with a product will have them spend more time on a product detail page.

7. Product Comparisons

This one is more applicable if you have multiple products of the same type and the user is trying to figure out which one is better suited for their needs. One good example would be an online store for prescription eye glasses. We have already seen an increased user engagement with this feature because we host an e-commerce website that does exactly that. 

On the website we host we have seen several users spend time comparing frames and using that comparison to make a decision before placing an order. If you have data for products from other manufactures or stores, then that data can be used to setup comparisons with products from other vendors as well. Comparisons are very helpful in converting visitors into customers.

8. Custom Order Pads

Not all the website visitors browsing your product catalog are ready to buy something from you. A lot of times users just like to browse the products and add them to their wish list. They may return at a later time or may share their wish list with friends or loved ones as a way to inform them of what they want for their birthdays, anniversaries or other important life events.

Custom order pads are a way to organize products into various lists. Users can either click on the "favorite" button to add a product to their favorites. They can also choose to create multiple lists and add different products to different lists. This can help you in multiple ways.

• Users need to sign up to use this feature so it will help you collect their email addresses.
• This drives user engagement and people who aren't even looking to buy anything can now spend more time browsing your products and add to lists.
• Placing order from a list of saved products is a single click process making it easier to checkout from a saved list.
• You can control or build a user's custom order pad in a B2B environment. You can create the list for your B2B customers based on their frequently ordered items and make their shopping experience better and easier.

9. Social Sharing

Add social sharing options wherever applicable. These can be added to blog articles, products, wish lists and many other areas that can benefit from sharing a piece of information with friends and family. This only helps with user engagement, it also brings in additional traffic to your website.

10. Site Speed

This one might feel irrelevant but it really matters if you are trying to keep the users on the website. Slow page loads are a big turn off and over 50% of users abandon the site if it takes too long to load a page. There are a number of things you can do to increase the site speed but you really do not have to worry about any of them if your site runs on the Cart2Order platform. We have already taken care of them for you. Our state of the art hosting infrastructure will help you scale your online business without worrying about the performance and scalability.

Conclusion