The Big Oxford Computer Co. Ltd

How to engage with your website visitors

by Tracy Walker - Business Development Director

Introduction

Creating a website is only the first step in the process to engage with potential customers, stakeholders and supporters online. A website that is rarely updated becomes static, offering old and uninteresting content that fails to evolve along with the organisation that owns it. This can have a worryingly detrimental effect, discouraging visitors from returning to the website by giving the impression they have already seen all you have to offer, and no longer need to return to the website.

The most important step you should make is to keep your website fresh. You must continue to attract and retain a loyal following of people that regularly return to the site, actively seek information about your organisation and spread positive messages to their personal networks.
Engaging with your audience

Your website needs to offer engagement with your visitors and audience. Regularly updating your website with relevant, timely and engaging content will inevitably make it successful - attracting both traffic and visitor attention.

The web community has grown significantly in the last 10 years and the move to community sites promoting online participation and interactivity has advanced enormously. Social networking sites, such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and MySpace provide a level of interaction that Web users have not only grown to expect, but now demand from their online experience.

So what can you do to keep up with this demand on your website? Create a ‘club or community’ feel where everyone is welcome. Engage with your visitors right from the home page of your website. Create exciting, fresh and informative content and features. Ultimately you are looking to promote your organisation. If this can be attained via word-of-mouth and referrals from your online community that’s simply great marketing.

Interactive features to try out

Why not try out some of the following interactive features on your website:

1. Encourage Visitor Participation with Your Site

User-generated content is a great way to keep your website fresh. Who better to suggest, create and upload content than the people who are visiting your website? They are likely to share your interests, so letting them add new content such as comments and reviews is a great way of ensuring that your site has exactly what they – and their peers - are looking for. You can also encourage user participation by establishing a forum, where visitors can exchange ideas and engage in lively conversations and debates.

2. Keep Visitors’ Informed – User Registration and Newsletter Alerts

3. Gauge Opinions - Quick Polls

A great way to interact with visitors is to ask their immediate opinions. The ability to hold fun, quick polls on current hot topics or news is ideal for getting visitors to express their own views and see what others have to say.

4. What’s In the News? - RSS News Feeds

‘Really Simple Syndication’, normally referred to as RSS, is a web feed used to publish frequently updated web pages like blog entries, news headlines, audio and video, in a standardised format. By using an RSS feed on your website, you can ensure your visitors always have access to the latest additions to your blog, as well as any other relevant information being pushed out on the feed. They can subscribe to updates in a feed reader, by email or even through social networks such as Twitter and Facebook.

5. Add a Calendar of Events

Make your website a useful resource for visitors by including a calendar of events that are important to your organisation or industry. Ensure it is easy for visitors to add events or to review a previous event, so that levels of participation remain high. To make it more lively, include a section where photos can be uploaded.

6. Visual Engagement - Interactive Video, Flash and Audio Files

Make your website more engaging by including multimedia files, such as video, Flash and audio files. Also consider web and podcasts that will engage with your visitors and make then return to your website to hear more of what you have to say.

7. Build-up a Visual Story - Image Galleries and Slideshows

Set-up image gallery’s and/or slideshows across your website alongside related content, such as campaigns, events and news stories. Visually building up a story about your organisation and the people who support it are key connection tools.

8. Join the Blogosphere

By having a blog you can easily and informally keep your readers abreast of what is happening in your industry and also demonstrate thought leadership in your field, while adding personality to your website. It is easy and fast to set-up a blog and you can start sharing your thoughts with your audience immediately. Be sure to update your blog at least once a week, so comments remain fresh and visitors have a reason to return. This is easily done by allowing many people to contribute to the blog and in turn, visitors will get to know your entire team, giving your organisation a human face. Also remember that a blog is great for improving your ranking on search engines.

References

You may find some of the following references and resources useful:

Online

ReadWriteWeb

Publications

Viney, David: “Get to the top on Google”; Nicholas Brealey Publishing (2008)
Hay, Deltina: “A Survival Guide to Social Media and Web 2.0 Optimization:
Strategies, Tactics, and Tools for Succeeding in the Social Web; Dalton Publishing
(2008)

Shuen, Amy: “Web 2.0: A Strategy Guide: Business thinking and strategies behind
successful Web 2.0 implementations; O'Reilly Media, Inc.; (2009)

Jones, Bradley L.: Web 2.0 Heroes: Interviews with 20 Web 2.0 Influencers; John
Wiley & Sons (2008)

Burrows, Terry: “Blogs, Wikis, MySpace, & More: Everything You Want To Know
About Using Web 2.0 but Are Afraid to Ask”; Chicago Review Press (2008)

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