Maintaining a website and generating revenue from it can be quite difficult, given the competitive landscape. Websites all over the internet are engaged in a fierce battle to get more visitors. Now, it is not just about getting visitors, but it is also about engaging them. How long each visitor stays on your website matters. Most sites use advertising to generate revenue, whereas users are now using content blockers more than ever, making it even more challenging to have traffic on your website that will generate revenue.

So, here are a few tricks in which will not only allow you to increase your return on investment but will also provide your visitors with more engaging content.

1. Design with the audience in mind

When you are building a website, it should have a certain target, a certain audience that you are trying to attract. Recently, most websites have gone got the minimalist design makeover. Moreover, things like responsive web design, conversion optimization and mobile ads have been a hot topic lately. Most mobile web browsers now come with content blockers baked right into them and enabled by default.

With so many parameters that can be tweaked, it becomes difficult to choose the perfect ones for your website. Here is where you need to decide what sort of audience you are trying to attract. Are you using the site to publish a blog, or is it a news website? Then you can opt for a minimalist website with a single page layout. If you want to launch a shopping site, then a slightly messier page will do better. It will increase the time spent on the page.

Regardless of whatever parameters you chose for designing your website, you should always make sure that the design is done professionally. A professionally designed website packed with information and flanked by sidebars on both sides can still look better than an unprofessionally designed minimal website.

2. Make navigation simpler

Bad website navigation can be a great annoyance to a lot of visitors. If you are in a site where it seemed impossible to find what you are looking for, then you will know the frustration. Making unnecessarily complicated menus, or having a large number of pages is not always needed. A lot of websites can be organized in a single page only, with simple linear navigation. For multi-page sites, a well thought out menus and generous internal linking can help quite a bit.

Similarly, with internal processes, such as signing up, or buying a product, or with just filling out a form, look for ways in which you can simplify the user experience. For example, for a sign-up process, you can simply as for the username and password and be done with the process. If needed, the user can go to the accounts page to add or change details. You need to prioritize visitor convenience so that they can get what they want with the minimum number of clicks.

3. Keep mobile devices in mind

A large amount of online traffic is now mobile users. Small business websites see over 50% of mobile traffic on a daily basis. Keeping your websites mobile-friendly can be quite simple. Responsive web design is a good starting point. If you are using a content management system such as WordPress or Joomla, you can opt for responsive themes. This does a lot of the work.

Next, you have to focus on the content too, to ensure that they are mobile friendly. This means, you need to optimize your images and videos, your ads should be minimal and non-intrusive. You will also need to eliminate unnecessary sidebars. Moreover, you need to check that calls to action, contact forms and opt-ins work properly on all devices – both mobile and desktop.

If any of these elements do not work properly, you will end up losing visitors.

4. Increase internal linking

Internal linking is crucial when it comes to search engine optimization. Moreover, it simplifies navigation for visitors as well. With increased internal linking, your visitors can explore your website with ease. However, there are a couple of caveats.

Firstly, keep the internal linking unambiguous. Do not send your visitors to a completely unrelated topic using an internal link. If you are referring to another post using an internal link, make sure that the anchor text is relevant to the topic that you are referring to. You can also use tags and a related articles section at the bottom of each post. On CMS powered websites, you can find multiple plugins that can assist you with that.

5. Collect email addresses

Email marking is a very effective way to increase your return on investment. It is of no use if a person visiting your website does not visit back. You can use email marketing not only to promote products or services, but you can also push content that your visitors may find relevant. You can use email campaigns as a dialogue, as a means to directly talk to your visitors and give them a reason to revisit your site.

6. Check your Analytics data

Your analytics data provides you with valuable insight into what action you need to take next. Digging through all the data can be overwhelming at first, but through trial an error, you will be able to pinpoint what exactly you need to do to increase traffic. Analytics data not only shows which pages or post create the most positive impact but also which ones create a negative impact. Therefore, you need to watch your exit pages closely.

7. Speed up your website

Search engines now rank websites based on their loading speeds too. Thus, a slow website means lower engagements. You can invest in CDN to speed up your website. Also, you can further optimize the design of the site to ensure that it loads up quickly.

Wrap Up

Producing great content is not the only factor that will drive your website traffic. Even though it is essential, you also need to focus on a lot of other things such as the design, the performance, and the conveniences of visitors if you want people to visit your site over and over again.