website engagement Archives

Visitors leave your website for a host of reasons. But the fact that they opened one or more webpages indicates interest in your content. Additionally, their visit means you now have better access to these people. The question is how to reengage these individuals who, because of their interest, are more likely to engage with you than those others surfing the web.

Exit Popups

One highly effective method for reengaging those departing your website is a popup offering an additional value piece, a lead magnet, in exchange for the visitor’s name and email address. Such popups appear when the visitor attempts to leave your website (mouse off of the webpage, close the webpage or tab, or click a link to leave the site), hence the name exit pop.

Regardless of the lead magnet, those signing-up should be entered into an email autoresponder sequence to fully reengage them with your website.

Branded Popups on Linked Sites

Providing links to other websites offers visitors additional value but takes them off your site. StartAFire is a free link shortening service that places a popup at the bottom of the linked page. This popup is fully branded with your favicon and website name; providing attractive, graphic links to two of your website’s pages. Consequently, these popups seek to reengage those who have already expressed interest in the content on your website.

Push Notifications

A staple of smartphone engagement, push notifications are now available with some browser limitations on desktop and laptop computers. PushCrew is an initially free service that enables push notifications to be sent to those who authorize such messaging via a popup appearing at the top center of the webpage they visited. Like email newsletter signups, who better to reengage than those whose chose to receive additional outreach from you.

Landing pages, including sales pages, capture personal data to enable follow-up engagement. This data represents investments of trust and time in you and your business; an investment that must yield a significant enough return to be made. Thus, it is imperative that you balance the amount of data required with the value offered.

Achieving Balance

As business owners, we naturally want as much data about our potential customers as possible. We believe that having this insight will enable us to optimally market to and convert our website visitors into paying customers.

Website visitors, however, hesitate to share their personal information. They worry about the security of their data and whether it will be used abusively.

Achieving the balance necessary to gain the engagement of potential customers involves several points:

Credibility: Website professionalism communicates a seriousness that instills confidence provided data won’t be abusively used (aka spam)
Privacy Policy: Your documented commitment to potential customers guaranteeing the security and appropriate use of their data; including not selling it to third parties
Offer Value: Personal data requests that are proportional to the perceived value of the offer and reasonably necessary for its delivery assures visitors that their data is being appropriately used

Proportional Value

Examples of proportional offer value to data requests include:

Online Comment Submission: First Name (optional), Last Name (optional), Email Address (optional)
Weekly Newsletter, Webinar, Training Video: First Name (typical), Last Name (optional), Email Address (required)
Reusable Template, eBook, or Benchmarking Report: First Name (typical), Last Name (typical), Title (typical), Company (typical), Company Size (typical), Email Address (required), Phone Number (optional), Other Information (optional)
Paid for Product or Service: First Name (required), Last Name (required), Title (optional), Company (optional), Company Size (optional), Email Address (required), Phone Number (optional), Address (required – physical product / optional – digital product), Payment Information (required – typically collected by the merchant services provided), Other Information (optional)

Final Thought…

Remember that the time to complete the data submission will be a cost that is also considered by visitors. As such, evaluate the use of option selection lists to speed data collection when developing forms. When such lists are used, always provide an ‘other’ option for those whose circumstances don’t fit the selections provided.