CAN YOU PIQUE YOUR CUSTOMERS’ INTEREST IN YOUR SITE OVER YOUR COMPETITORS’?

Some stores change their inventory daily, and thereby keep customers engaged because they’re giving them something new to see each time they shop. Other companies run frequent sales to keep their store on customers’ radar. With so many options on the Web, however, it becomes difficult to continue to engage users’ interest in your offering.

Restaurants face this issue every day because customers have so many dining options to choose from. How will you pique potential customers’ interest? You can offer incentives, but incentives are not a long-term strategy, whereas engagement is. For instance, Red Lobster offers seasonal seafood options that customers can enjoy. The restaurant has shrimp, crab, and lobster “fests” throughout the year to engage customers and get them to stop in for a meal.

As you work to engage visitors, it is important to set specific key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure visitors’ engagement. Measuring a return on engagement activities can be difficult, especially because some activities will take place outside of your website and in media over which you have little control.

Several metrics can measure visitor engagement. Some of these metrics are internal to your website, so they are straightforward to measure; others will require visitors’ engagement on outside platforms.

Internal metrics measure visitors’ interaction on your website. These metrics are reported by your analytics program. Here are some examples:

Average time on site

In general, it is true that the longer visitors stay on your site, the more likely they will buy from you since they are engaged and invested. However, you must review your analytics and conduct usability studies to ensure that time spent on your site is a true reflection of engagement and not visitor confusion. We pointed out some of the issues that surround how analytics programs report the average time a visitor spends on a website, so you must keep in mind that this metric might not be very accurate.

Pages per visit

The number of pages visitors navigate to while on your website could be a good indicator of how engaged they are with your site. This metric will vary greatly based on the type of website you run. We generally find that for ecommerce websites, the average number of pages per visit will increase as the website conversion rate increases. Some of our customers report an average of 9 to 13 pages per visit. Content-based websites will report a greater number of pages per visit since the survival and success of these sites are based largely on the number of page views.

On-site social interaction

If your website uses social tools to engage visitors, such as blogs or forums, you should examine how visitors interact with these tools. Each tool has its own metrics that indicate how engaged visitors are. With forums, for example, you should track:

• The number of overall registrations

• The number of active users on the forum

• The number of active discussions

As you develop other tools to engage visitors, you must think about what metrics you should use to measure engagement.

Tool-specific metrics on the website

In many instances, websites provide mechanisms for visitors to share content on the site with others. Content-based websites such as news websites or blogs allow visitors to email stories or blog entries to others. Figure 8-1 shows two ways an ecommerce website allows visitors to share product information with their friends. Visitors can click the “Tell a friend” button, or share the information on social networks by using the “Share This” functionality. Regardless of the tools you provide to your visitors for sharing your content, it is important to track the use and effectiveness of these tools.

Figure 8-1. The use of social tools to increase engagement

The following are some of the external metrics you can use to track engagement:

The number of inbound links to your website

Links are the currency of the Web. The more quality links that point to your website, the more authority your website builds. Links are also a good indicator of how much a person was engaged by your website. People will link to content that moves them (in a positive or negative way). Several tools are available for tracking inbound links to a site, including Yahoo! Site Explorer (free), Open Site Explorer (a free version is available), and Majestic SEO.

The number of external mentions

With the advent of social media, a lot of the interaction and discussion regarding your business can occur away from your website. It is important to track these discussions and engage those who are involved.