How to Create an Engaging Website

The Web is everywhere. People access the Internet on their mobile phones, their netbooks, their laptops and their desktops. The Web is on video game consoles and the iPod Touch. With more and more ways to access the Web, people are using the Web for more and more things every day.

It’s your job as a business owner to capitalize on this widespread use of the Web to build your business. Give your clients a reason to choose you over your competitors. Provide valuable and important information, and build confidence so that your clients will call you when they need you; not just look up the first guy they see. How can you use the Web to capture your audience and convert them to clients? It all starts with building an engaging website.

You have 30 seconds – or less.

It’s common knowledge that readers don’t stick around Web pages very long, but most people don’t realize exactly how short the average visit is: under 30 seconds. That’s right – within 30 seconds of viewing your page, anywhere between 60-70% of your viewers will click away again. That gives you less than 30 seconds to entice readers to spend more time on your website and give you an opportunity to sell your product or services.

Layout vs. content – which is more important?

Both layout and content are vital features of your website from the perspective of how much time people spend viewing. If people don’t like your layout, or can’t easily find the information they’re looking for (in the form of headers, links or content) they’ll click away within 5-10 seconds. If readers like the layout, they’ll spend up to 30 seconds perusing your content and deciding whether or not your website meets their needs. That’s why the content you provide is so vitally important – it’s your only tool to make people stick around longer than 30 seconds and actually learn about your product and services.

Provide information about your product or service.

If you’re selling a product, provide information about the product! Provide pictures, reviews, user comments and testimonials. Don’t try to blindside visitors to your site, either. Don’t tell them that your product is the only one in the entire world that does what you say it does if it isn’t, because information is an easily-accessed commodity on the Web. If you’re dishonest in marketing claims, your readers won’t trust you. Provide fair, balanced overviews of your products, and your users will appreciate it.

The same thing goes for a service, except that you need to err even more on the side of ‘too much’ information when you’re describing a service. Without tangible photos and statistics to compare, people are much more subjective when they select a service than a product. Therefore, you must cater to their need for information and provide plenty of it.

Talk about your services. Give your readers a range of the things you do. Don’t say you provide a service if you don’t, just to get clients in the door – they won’t thank you for it. Provide samples, when possible, and testimonials and comments are even more useful when you have services. If you make the mistake of providing too little information, your potential clients will just go with someone who provides a better description or more engaging prose.

Break up the pages with headers and visual elements.

Big blocks of text are off-putting to most website visitors. Break up your pages with headers and visual elements to enhance your website. Headers make it easier for people to find information, and give them a roadmap to digesting your content. Visual elements break up large blocks of text, and they can also provide great illustrations of the things you’re discussing. Clever and effective utilization of both of these page elements can drastically change how much time people spend on your website.

Provide quality content.

Finally, make sure you provide quality content. Content that merely duplicates content readers can find somewhere else usually isn’t enough to make readers stick around. You need to give your readers a reason to stay on and trust your website. Don’t distract readers with poorly-written content, full of grammatical errors, bad transitions and mediocre content. Provide quality content, and your readers will know they can trust you – and be more likely to use your product or services, either now or in the future.

Add dynamic content.

Static content isn’t all that interesting. Most people will never bother to bookmark and come back to your website if you only provide basic information about yourself and your product (unless they already intend to use you). However, if you provide dynamic content – rotating or adding new content on an ongoing basis – readers will have a reason to keep coming back to your website. If readers are visiting your page regularly, they’re far more likely to select you when they need your product or service down the road. Even if you don’t capture immediate sales now, adding dynamic content can keep people coming back and drastically improve your chances in capturing a client in the future.

Partner with an experienced professional.

This is one area in which spending the money on an experienced professional can really pay off. If you hire someone who works for a rock-bottom rate and provides poor or mediocre content, you’re not going to realize your website’s true potential. However, if you partner with an experienced professional who knows what clients are looking for and how to engage them properly, you’ll capture a far higher conversion ratio than you might with a cheaper provider. The initial cost might be higher, but the potential for higher conversion rates easily offsets that cost over a few weeks or months of successful operation.