As a business owner or marketer, you’ll know all about trying to boost engagement rates with your content. If you post something on Facebook or Instagram, you want people to Like, Share, and Comment, and you’ll try and figure out ways to do this. With your emails, you’ll want people to read your content, as well as entering your sales funnel through your CTAs.

However, there seems to be less emphasis on boosting content engagement on your actual website. Whether you’re posting videos or blogs posts, it’s important to remember that content engagement is not just for your social media pages.

But how do you get people to interact and engage more with your website content? In today’s guide, we’re going to look through a ton of ideas to get your brain whirring and your customers clicking.

It’s all About Speed

First things first, if your website is slow and takes it time loading, you’re going to lose people before they even get a chance to see what your content is all about. Maybe it’s sad that the human attention spans have reached this point, but that’s just the way it is and the game we have to play.

One study found that slow-loading websites cost retailers around $2 billion in lost sales every single year and that 53% of mobile websites are abandoned by customers because they take too long to load up. You literally have seconds.

Nobody is going to engage with your content if they’re not reading it, and they’re not going to read it if it doesn’t load, and then they’re gone elsewhere, so optimise your website. There are plenty of ways you can do this, from reducing the size and quality of your images to choosing a faster hosting service.

Grab Their Attention

Okay, so your website is loading quickly, and people are coming in and sticking around. What do you have to grab their attention? Think about how you use Instagram or browse the web. If you click on a website and see a massive wall of text, are you going to stick around to read it?

Probably not.

On IG, do you stay and look at every single image that pops up until you see something you like? No. You scroll rapidly until something catches your eye. It’s the same with your website. Research shows that customers will make a judgement on your website in as little as 50 milliseconds. Make that time count!

Have Structure and White Space

Imagine if this article was just one big block of text written in hard-to-read font. Urgh. Can you imagine trying to sit through and read that? Not going to happen. Instead, you can see this article has structure. It has headings and subheadings, and nice tasty little paragraphs that aren’t too long to read.

All the information is in bite-sized chunks, and there’s a ton of white space that makes this article easy on the eyes. It doesn’t feel like a daunting task to read it all. The fact you’re reading this at all means you’re more likely to take the message in and therefore much more likely to engage with the content.

This needs to be reflected in your own website.

Make sure everything is nicely structured and spaced apart, and nothing is too close together or overhanging. This is especially important with the mobile version of your website because if everything is grouped together on the screen and ultimately illegible, your traffic is going to bounce.

Diversify Your Content

Having written text is a great way to convey information to your readers, but it’s not the only way. Diversifying your content is one of the best ways to get people to engage with your content because they have a choice with what they can engage with.

“From having videos and images to interactive quizzes and infographics and charts and GIFs and all the other kinds of content people love. Get creative with what you have to offer. The more diversity you have, the more people will react with your content and the more engagement you’ll have,” shares Tina Emmerson, a journalist at Paperfellows and State Of Writing.

Create a Suggested Content System

Go onto any big retail website or publication, and you’ll see a suggested content system. This usually sits to the side of the website or at the bottom of an article and will suggest similar content or products for people to go and interact with after they have finished up on the page they’re on.

“This is a tried-and-tested way to keep people on your website and giving them more opportunities to find content you have that they’re going to love. When they find a piece of content they adore, they’ll be much more likely to engage with it, further cementing your website and mission into their minds,” shares Nick Darling, a tech writer at Essayroo and Assignment Help.

Make Your Calls to Actions Bold

One of the most sought-after forms of engagement you’ll want is for people to click on your Calls to Actions (CTAs), for whatever that may be. However, if people visiting your website can’t clearly see your CTA, or it doesn’t jump out at them instantly, you may have lost your chance for them to engage in this way with you altogether.

Head over to the Netflix website and see their homepage. The sign-up button (which reads JOIN FREE FOR A MONTH) is bold, red (so it remains on brand), and there’s absolutely no way you’re going to miss it. You know exactly what’s going to happen when you press it, and there’s no room for misinterpretation.

You need to have this effect this your calls to action. Without bold and clear CTAs, people will simply scan over your content and move onto the next thing. Just like every other part of your website, you need to be eye-catching and grab your reader’s attention without letting it go.