If you’ve built a website, you probably know by now that it takes more than building it to get those visitors to stay, or to attract new visitors. The old adage, “If you build it, they will come”—doesn’t work so well in the world of web design.
Instead, you need to make it easy for them to make the decision to explore your site. And there are two primary methods for achieving this: by improving your user experience (UX) and getting creative. With that in mind, here are ten ways to get more visitors to your website.
1 – Use a CDN
Your website visitors are coming from all around the world, and they should be able to access your content just as easily as someone in your home area can. By using a CDN (content delivery network), this is fairly easy.
“Not only will this make your site faster, but it can also help to secure it and reduce your bandwidth usage,” says DreamHost. How it works is simple: a CDN offers your website access to multiple servers around world, which means loading times would be just as quick as if they were accessing it from the origin server.
2 – Let Them Spin the Wheel
Everyone loves trying to win a prize, and with the WP Optin Wheel WordPress plugin, they can do just that. Customize the wheel’s design to your liking, and list different prizes. If you were an ecommerce business, for example, some prizes might be a free item or discount. If you were a niche blog, it might be a free ebook or entry into a competition. The best part about this is, your user will need to enter their email to spin, which gives you some marketing opportunity.
3 – Have a Contest
A contest is a great way to get your visitors engaged. Ideally, you’ll implement a social component into your competition, like a hashtag contest. You should take a look at how other companies and bloggers are using contests to promote their websites, which gives you some added inspiration. Additionally take a look at contest WordPress plugins like WooBox.
4 – Start a Blog
Search engine optimization is the best way to bring in organic traffic. And a blog is one of the best ways to improve your overall SEO. Commit to a blogging schedule and stay consistent, and with patience, you’ll find yourself slowly moving up in the search engine rankings.
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5 – Check Your Broken Links
We’ve established that SEO is important, and the links that are on your site are a critical piece of SEO. Broken links can really affect the user experience because not only is it disappointing for a user to click on a link to nowhere, but it makes Google feel as though your site isn’t reliable. Fortunately, there are plenty of broken link checkers you can take advantage of.
6 – Use Responsive Design
Today, people are visiting websites from all types of devices and screen sizes. Therefore, you need to make sure it’s accessible to everyone, easily and seamlessly. Responsive design is the way to go. It formats your site to fit any type of screen effectively, so the visitor doesn’t lose out on key features or become confused by jumbled navigation and strange layouts.
7 – Less is More
You don’t have to fill your website homepages with so much content. One of the simplest ways to improve the user experience is to follow the “less is more” mantra. Too many images and copy can easily overwhelm the reader, and you’ll find that even with snippets of text, you can convey your message just as effectively.
8 – Utilize White Space
Many webmasters don’t fully understand the power of white space. The fact is, in the world of web design, white space creates mental “breaks” for viewers. This is because white space naturally forces any website visitor to focus on what’s most important on the page. Take a look at this article to learn more about how other websites are using white space to their advantage.
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9 – Understand the Power of Video
Today, video plays a bigger role in web design than ever before. For example, if you were a business selling a B2B software program, you might use an explainer video to briefly show visitors what the software is all about. After all, one study found that webpages with an explainer video made customers feel 85% more inclined to purchase a product.
10 – Establish Social Proof
Social proof can go a long way for your website visitors. This is when you ensure your social media accounts are prominent or easily accessible on your website. This is social proof that you actually care about your customers and engaging with them. The more followers you have, of course, the stronger your social proof is. But what’s more important than the quantity is quality. Rather than focusing too much on the numbers, focus on delivering consistent value.