Inside Small Business | Small Business & Home Business Marketing

Ask The Panel

Alex Kiselenchev from Integrate UK Ltd asks:

• I would like my website to be interactive. I’m considering things like user blogs, member profiles, etc. What would you recommend to ensure my visitors are engaged with my site?

Nicole: I think it’s a great idea to make your site interactive! Your visitors will be much more likely to return, and frequently, if your site is interactive. What you offer your visitors, though, should really be based on your type of site and what will be most useful to your visitors. For example, if you have a retail site product reviews are especially helpful. If your retail site has frequent repeat purchases you might want to allow purchasers to make a profile so they can recommend different products. If you have a blog you’ll want to allow visitors to comment on your blog postings, but make sure you respond to the comments as well – being interactive goes both ways! Your blog could also benefit from surveys asking the opinion of your visitors on specific topics. This will also provide you will a relevant topic to discuss in your blog posting. If you have a purely informative web site, say on mountain bike trails in your area, you’ll want options where visitors can create a profile that describes their level of experience, bike, etc and allows them to upload photos of trails, descriptions of conditions recently found on trails, and so on.

There are many ways to make your site interactive. To get started you first need to think about what will be most useful to your visitor and most relevant to your type of web site. Then you’ll be well on your way to a robust web site that people want to come back to!

Amy: The answers to this question really depend on what you’re trying to accomplish with your website. The most important thing is to regularly update the content on your website, to keep it fresh and interesting. Visitors will stop coming back if the information is stale.

Keeping a company blog is a great way to achieve constantly changing content and allowing your visitors to comment on posts will keep them engaged. Blogs and forums are a great way to keep the conversation going. You can also add a Live Chat feature to engage visitors who want to chat with someone. Add a Recent News section with regular updates…and send out a regular newsletter to keep your visitors coming back.

Another way to frequently change your website is to include your updates from your Twitter, Facebook and other social networking sites. This allows your visitors to link to and from your website thru your other social networking profiles.

If you’re selling products, add a “Featured Product” to your Home page and change it often…or add a section that highlights your best sellers or sale items. You can also market your products through email and other forms of advertising, by sending out a new offer monthly or weekly, and linking back to the website.

These are just some ideas of things you can do to keep visitors engaged. Like I said, the most important thing is to keep the information fresh…and send updates and offers to keep people coming back.

Curt: The first thing you need to ask yourself is, “What is the goal of the visitors to my website?” Your website may be wearing many different hats for your business; but if it doesn’t quickly meet the needs of your visitors, you will find that they will not take the time to interact with you or your site. Once you know their needs, then you can cater all of your interactions to meet their end goal.

My favorite way to engage with a website is through photos and videos. If you are strictly an informative website, your visitors will want to see what you are talking about. If you are offering a product or service, showcase samples of your work in a gallery. In my opinion, your images will help set you apart from the thousands of other businesses on the World Wide Web.

Posted on Tuesday, October 6th, 2009 at 12:31 pm and is filed under Small Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.