Building and designing a website takes a lot of time and effort, as does working toward getting a regular number of visitors. But even after all of this work ensuring your website is attractive to both visitors and search engines, it can often be difficult to keep the attention of a visitor, especially with the rapid movement of today’s internet.
There are a number of methods to hook visitors in that are not too difficult to utilise within your website. The way forward is by using interactive elements to keep visitors doing things on your site, reading and clicking through as their interest and attention is held. Read on to find out the most popular interactive features to use.
Utilising Animations
A great way of finding elements that work in practice as much as theory is to look at the websites that have high user interaction metrics. In this case, it is worth looking at the highest rated betting websites to see examples of what works. One of the first things you will note when you look at these sites is that they use animation throughout the website to draw a user’s eye toward particular elements, promoting a click through and further engagement. Animation can be as much as having several elements swap in and out, fading in text as a user scrolls or highly detailed .gif files, but can also be as simple as a small arrow that bounces up and down to signify importance to a specific button or field element. Any kind of animation will quickly guide the user’s attention to the parts of your website that you want them to see, so that they do not passively scroll through and miss anything.
Quizzes And Polls
Using quizzes and polls are an excellent way to maintain a user’s attention and focus on your website. There is no better example of this than the infamous Buzzfeed Quizzes page, where huge amounts of people flock toward any number of quizzes to determine anything from what year you will get married, to the type of cryptid you are and even your favourite sandwich. Users like to have personalised experiences on a website, so if you can deliver a recommendation based on their preferences or needs they are more likely to have a positive opinion of the site and are likely to come back or use the service your website offers.
Never Ignore Buttons
Often considered a very simplistic form of interactive element, the button should not be ignored by any web designer, be they beginner or veteran. A button is one of the most effective ways to keep a user engaged in the content as well as to direct their attention through the website as you need them to. The error many people make with buttons is that they make them one block color and don’t make it clear what said button will do. The best way to make a button that stands out is to use creative techniques, such as having the cursor change when hovering over it to show that the button is interactable and not just for aesthetics. Having the button animate or change color on hover is another great way to get users to interact and increase your click through rate.
More Forms, Less Fields
Many websites use forms on their websites to gage user metrics, sign people up for newsletters and more. Forms are a great method of interacting with a user, but a badly planned or executed form can lead to users ignoring it or seeing it as too much effort. A form should be very simple to fill out as you should only take the most necessary information and avoid any distractions. It should also take very little effort to fill out, with any questions being closed questions so that a user does not have to write lengthy answers or spend too much time answering. It is also vital that all fields are labelled to avoid any confusion, as this can also drive away users who would otherwise interact and fill out the form.
Social Media Sharing
Social media can be an excellent tool for sharing your website, but did you know that it can also be used to promote interactivity on your pages? Having the option of sharing articles, website news or images from your site can have people interact with your content by sharing it to their friends. If you have some artistic pictures of a product on your website, give users the option to share it to Instagram and Twitter underneath it. Some websites even have an element that displays the most recent tweets or posts that others have made about the site, meaning that the user can see that these social media posts are happening and make them more likely to engage with your site.
As you can see there are a huge number of ways to hook in the attention of your visitors with simple interactive elements. These should help to increase the engagement of your website and keep visitors hooked and coming back. Once you’ve gotten these elements working, don’t forget to try new things, as the websites that innovate are often the websites that get the most attention.
