5 must-have features that will boost engagement on your website
Ready to boost? Read on for our recommended features that you can utilise
Intro
We just finished a mini-project for Derby-based charity, Welcome Churches - a refresh of its website.
A snapshot of the homepage of the Welcome Churches website
Welcome Churches is a Christian charity that exists to help refugees settle in the UK.
One of the common misconceptions with a website is to assume that it will do all the hard work and that people will come flocking, send enquiries and buy or donate.
This is sadly not true. The real work starts after you pull the trigger and go live, but there are some helpful features that can boost engagement.
This blog is not a pat on the back, but designed to:
Show you website features that can boost visitor engagement
Highlight what we are learning as we build websites as part of our business
Tips, tricks and anything to avoid along the way!
The promotional pop-up in action for Welcome Churches
1. Promotional pop-upS
A promotional pop-up is the small box with a call to action that appears when you land on a website
It is an attention-seeking feature that, when well devised, can encourage visitors in certain pre-defined directions
It has a number of applications, such as newsletter sign-ups, social media engagement, special offers, codes and vouchers and promoting content
If we take newsletter sign-ups as an example, the net result could be as high as a 40% increase in your conversion rate (source matthewwoodward.co.uk)
This is significant, as your newsletter gives you the means to talk directly to your audience about matters and products at the core of what you do
What we learned
To maximise the impact of the promotional pop-up for Welcome Churches, we delved into its branding pack and chose a high impact supporting colour (the pink)
We also tweaked the timing of the pop-up to give visitors a bit of breathing space on arrival, rather than ramming it down their throats
There is still a lot of debate about sign-up forms and GDPR compliance
Our approach was to include a well-visible privacy notice and ensure that double opt-in was turned on with MailChimp
For more on GDPR, see below
The About us page - one of the most popular page on a website
2. About us page
The About us page is one of the most popular pages on a website, believe it or not
It's also one of the most unloved, which is unfortuante, but leaves an obvious opportunity
The reason for this is that your visitors want to know about you, not simply the prosaic details about what you offer
About us presents an opportunity for you to put some flesh on the bone - an insight into what makes you who you are
Who doesn't like a good story?
You can do some really obvious things that will help connect you as a brand with your audience
Put your people up with photos and some interesting bios
Structure it so that it doesn't become information overload - not everyone wants your blow by blow timeline
For those that want more detailed information, link to it or keep it tidied away in concertinas
What we learned
Bios are best written by the individual or someone close to him or her in the organisation
To get the ball rolling, we found some bio text elsewhere online
However, this wasn't quite sufficient (and just a primer), so we ensured to tap the team on the shoulder regularly for this
In the era of social media, quality head shots were a little hard to come by, so our advice (as with LinkedIn) is to get these done professionally where possible and budget allows
Present yourself well to the outside world - there shouldn't really be any excuses with all the technology and free apps available
An example enquiry form with a privacy notice
3. GDPR-compliant forms
As you've probably picked up, the theme here is trust
Data and privacy is a massive area which relies on trust between visitors and service-providers
At the end of the day, it's pretty simple though
Visitors want to know what you need, what you're going to do with it and why
Not in minute detail, but the general assurance that you're trustworthy, and somewhere to find more information, should the need arise
Forms are a really handy bit of kit on a website, and probably taken for granted as well as abused in the past
Now that GDPR is in force, your privacy notices need to evident
A simple sentence is sufficient to establish the trust relationship, and provided your back office systems are in place, you will have the audit trail that the ICO talks about
What we learned
We've found a nice, neat way to cover lots of bases with forms
We now include a privacy notice as standard and a radio button to capture active consent
The form is then typically saved to a Google Drive sheet and directed to the appropriate inbox for processing
This forms part of the audit trail as well as a backup in the cloud
We want to do some further work on styling forms overall to lift the aesthetic and convey corporate branding
One a handful of newsletter sign-up boxes
4. Native newsletter sign up boxes
We've established that if your website is doing its job visitors are taking action
Aside from the promotional pop-up, a newsletter sign-up box is another excellent tool to begin engaging with visitors
In its simplest form, it is a box in which an individual types an e-mail address and clicks a submit button
He or she is then added to a maillist, such as in MailChimp, allowing you to begin to communicate what is important to your business objectives
Obviously, there are a few other things to think about, such as:
Engaging wording around the box to encourage sign-ups
A privacy notice (see above)
Do you ask for a first name or not?
If you want to supercharge the process, you might consider:
Redirecting the form on submission, since you've got someone's undivided attention
Add a welcome message to your MailChimp subscription process to underline a key offering (or just be polite)
What we learned
It's good to have sign-up boxes in key areas peppered across your website - one doesn't really maximise your chances
As this was quite repetitive, we created a template in Evernote to copy and paste details in each instance
It's also a chance for a bit of humour, rather than being another transaction, so we exercised some imagination with the sign-up copy
An example of a branded, integrated donate widget
5. Integrated donate widget
This one's not directly relevant to businesses, but there are some transferrable principles
Charities' lifeblood is volunteers and financial gifts
Making the donation process as smooth as possible is vitally important
A neat, simple donation area makes life easy for the donor, building favour with the charity
Ideally, you will be able to cut and paste some code so that you can deploy the widget at will
We used a donation plug-in from Donorbox on this project, which works and integrates well
It includes the ability to style the form, allowing it to flow with the corporate branding
See below for our thoughts on business applications
What we learned
Donorbox was a bit of an unknown, but we have been pleasantly surprised by its UK-tailored functionality
It can handle Gift Aid declarations, £ currency, one-off and regular gifts (Direct Debits), thank-yous to givers and GDPR
As for businesses, the closest parallel is processing online payments
We have found a number of functions that we use or recommend
Acuity scheduling is brilliant for optimising diarising appointments, and can be used for paid classes or tutorials. It also free with a Squarespace account!
Stripe Billing is excellent for recurring subscriptions, and we have discovered membership platforms that integrate with Squarespace
We hope you've enjoyed this week's blog. If you've got a website or a branding need, do get in touch - we'd love to chat and see how we can help you!
