An interactive website encourages business growth.
While having a basic static website was enough to get a leg up over the competition during the earlier years of the internet, these kinds of website may not do your business any good in today’s online environment. What you need is a well-designed interactive website with constantly updated content to attract visitors and keep them coming back for more.
What Makes a Website Interactive?
Basically, an interactive website allows users to do more than just read text or view graphics. With an interactive web design, users can:
- Perform transactions (subscribe to newsletter, leave feedback, buy products) using an online form.
- Submit comments, photos, videos, blogs and other forms of contents.
- Interact with the information and services being offered using a variety of interactive tools (calculators, clickable maps, etc.)
- Get personalized recommendations based on geography and interest
- Get user-friendly help and assistance (live chat, pop up help screen, etc.)
Needless to say, an interactive website can help attract the attention of your target audience, and help you build relationships that would be beneficial to your business.
Aside from helping you attract qualified website traffic and build long-term relationships with your target audience, having an interactive website offers a wide range of benefits. It can help build your brand and establish your authority as an expert in your industry. Additionally, it can improve your search engine rankings and help generate more sales.
How to Make Your Website More Interactive
Here’s what you need to do to facilitate beneficial interaction with your target audience.
Have regular updates. Share interesting and useful content on your blog on a regular basis, update your products, create infographics, podcasts, and videos, and send out newsletter to your list. Reach out to your audience to keep them engaged.
Encourage user-generated content. Consider adding a forum or discussion board, and encourage visitors to leave comments on your blog. While these features may not be suitable for all types of websites, they can provide fresh content to your blog or website with minimum effort and can keep visitors coming back for more.
Use social plug-ins. Aside from enhancing your website’s interactivity with its current users, adding social plug-ins can help expand your reach.
Incorporate live chat features. Making it easy for your customers to contact you can do wonders for your business. It can help show that you have your customers’ best interest in mind and would like to provide them the best user experience possible.
These are some of the best ways to make your website more interactive and keep your customers engaged so use them all together or pick those that would be most appropriate for your business. You will surely be thrilled with the results.
