Half the battle is creating a phenomenal website. The other half? Getting visitors to stay on your website for longer than a few seconds.

To put it into perspective, the attention span of the modern website visitor is eight seconds. And studies indicate that the time between open and close is a lot shorter when someone is browsing on a mobile device.

When it comes to modern digital marketing and website visitors, “engagement” is the keyword.

With the sheer volume of content out there, it’s crucial for businesses to have engaging websites that keep visitors on-site for longer periods. An increase in average time on site leads to return users, increased sales, and greater brand recognition. And engaging content equals engaged site visitors.

On average, engaged users spend an additional 25 minutes on-site each week. That extra bit of time can be the difference between making a sale or not.

Aside from the baseline of having a website that’s easy to navigate, there are five things you can add to your site to make it more engaging.

Five easy ways to boost time on your website:

Trivia

Trivia is a great way to quickly engage your audience. You can test your visitors’ knowledge with questions related to your brand. For example, if you sell hair care products, you might have a quick quiz about hair types or the best way to care for hair in certain climates.

Quizzes instantly engage your audience and get them to interact with your site for longer. If your trivia questions are educational to your niche brand, you can always provide commentary on the correct answers. And depending on your questions, you might even want to link products or services you provide as a solution to common problems.

While you craft your trivia questions, you’ll want to keep the tone lighthearted and make sure they evoke your brand’s personality. Keep the questions, answers, and comments short and sweet to maximize your audience engagement.

Polls

Polls are interactive in the same way trivia questions are, but they give you direct insight into your audience’s perspectives and interests. Poll questions can help you update your online content or expand your product or service offerings.

If you’ve ever wanted to read your customers’ minds, polls are the way to go. They offer an easy way to assess user sentiment while creating a solid bond between your readers and your brand.

Additionally, polls are an easy way to keep your website content fresh. If every time a person visits your site, they have something new to interact with, they’ll likely pull up your website repeatedly.

Commenting

Comment systems are another way to improve audience engagement. Commenting promotes a healthy dialogue between the person, your brand, and other visitors. In a best-case scenario, comments help you build a brand community. Visitor comments can also help to boost your site’s ranking on search engines.

You can add comments to the end of blog posts, on product pages, and more. At the same time, you can have people create an online profile on your website to enable commenting. This pushes you closer to converting leads while keeping them on your site longer.

If you want to encourage users to leave comments, you can employ a point system that incentivizes interaction. People will want to earn more points toward a reward, so they’ll engage with your site more often.

Gamification

Gamification is about adding game-like elements to non-game content to increase audience engagement. Games are inherently interactive, but they’re extremely engaging because games release dopamine. Games let the customer feel like they’re in control, and if the game is addictive, your users will want to spend more time playing the game on your site.

People are competitive, and gamification caters to this. They’ll want to beat themselves and other users and might encourage their family or friends to give it a try. The more time they spend playing the game on your site, the more likely they’ll be to ultimately make a purchase. You could even give them a bit of a nudge by offering rewards for “beating” the game or getting a new high score.

However, you should only invest in gamification if you’re using a reliable creator. If your game is glitchy or hard to interact with, your users won’t want to play it for extended periods. Be sure to create a quality game or employ an engineer who will craft something magnificent.

Content Recirculation

You took the time to create fantastic content, and the last thing you want is for it to sit in a dark corner on your website. Content recirculation helps you bring that five-star content to the forefront of your website. With content spotlights, you’ll be able to showcase items that your users will find appealing and want to read more about.

Content recirculation is an easy way to increase time on site and pages per visit. And it takes the least amount of effort to implement because you already have a wealth of content. You’ll convert lukewarm readers into loyal readers by constantly offering something new for them to browse.

Insticator for Boosted Site Engagement

Implementing these five tools is easier than you might think. Insticator offers an easy way to add any (or all) of these solutions to your website.

At Insticator, we have a proven track record of helping companies increase the amount of time people spend on their websites. Read any of our case studies and you’ll see how effective our engagement techniques are. We also provide a comprehensive analytics dashboard, so you can track your engagement statistics in real-time. Let us do all the heavy lifting while you watch as your dedicated fanbase multiplies.

Reach out to us today and let’s chat about how we can increase your visitors’ time on your website.