Are you getting tons of organic traffic but struggling with engagement?
Here are 10 ways to boost engagement, within just 24 hours! These tried and tested UX design techniques are sure to improve user engagement by improving the online customer journey, making your website more user-friendly and creating a memorable and enjoyable experience for site visitors. Whether you’re just venturing into ecommerce or you have a well-established lead-generation website, these top tips will help take your site from boring to brilliant. Without further ado, let’s dive in!
1. Customise 404 error pages
404 error pages are often a huge barrier to converting first-time site visitors into loyal and engaged customers. If a customer lands on a broken page that isn’t interesting, engaging or has no links to delve further into your website, they’ll simply abandon their journey and leave you without a lead or new customer. One of the best ways to quickly improve the UX of your site is to update your 404 error page! Think about how you can make it fun and engaging and consider adding links to the most popular pages of your site. That way, you’re casting a wide net and ensuring that there are multiple options for individuals landing on your site to choose from.
2. Optimise site speed
Optimising your website speed is a sure-fire way to boost engagement. Considering that a site visitor will abandon your site if it takes longer than just 3 seconds to load, every millisecond counts. Be sure to minimise large image files, enable browser caching and consider upgrading your hosting provider if needed. A faster website means happier, more engaged customers!
3. Improve mobile responsiveness
If you haven’t already optimised your website for mobile, you’re missing a trick. With a staggering 60% of web traffic coming from mobile devices, a mobile-friendly site in 2025 is truly non-negotiable. Responsive website design is the best way to ensure your site scales beautifully to every screen size, whether it’s a mobile, tablet, iPad or desktop and ensures that buttons are easy to tap and user journeys are seamless. Site speed and performance are the key to keeping users engaging with your site and driving them to convert, so how can you quickly improve mobile responsiveness? Start by optimising and compressing images, removing intensive features that are slowing your site down and enlarging small text to make it more legible.
4. Incorporate social proof
Social proof is one of the best ways to quickly engage users. The fear of missing out is a tried-and-tested method for driving online engagement. Add verified customer testimonials, start ratings and user-generated content (UGC) via reviews integrations such as TrustPilot, YotPo or Reviews.io to instantly start building trust and encouraging users to spend time on your site. By display these trust signals on product pages, homepages, landing pages and category pages, you’ll reassure users (particularly first-time site visitors) and drive brand loyalty.
5. Ensure authentic but professional photos
Authentic imagery is a fantastic way to boost website engagement by making your site feel genuine and trustworthy. High-quality, original photography that captures your brand identity in a real and authentic way is a great way to show off your brand’s values and resonate with site visitors. Whether you’re shooting lifestyle imagery, team photos or product shots, authenticity will shine through and allow you to deeply connect with your target audience. What are you waiting for? Get a new shoot booked in asap and transform the feel of your site with authentic, beautiful photography that captures your brand.
6. Boost accessibility
Next to mobile-friendliness and responsive design, website accessibility is just as important when it comes to engaging users. A truly user-friendly website is one that everyone can navigate. There are tons of ways to instantly improve the accessibility of your website for those with visual impairments, different mobility needs or unstable internet connectivity, and the best part is that these improvements will create a better online experience for everyone who lands on your site. Start by implementing alt-text on all website images to ensure screen readers can interpret content accurately, ensure that background colours have enough contrast to text to ensure that content is easy to read and consider adding website accessibility options so users can choose whether dark mode or larger text may be better for their individual needs. Accessibility doesn’t just mean complying with rules and regulations, it can make a huge difference to your customers!
7. Utilise contextual nudges
Reducing cognitive effort for a user to execute an action is absolutely paramount to successful UX design. By utilising well-placed contextual nudges such as tooltips and progress indicators for form filling, you can smoothly guide site visitors through their online journey. When customer know instinctively what to do, without second-guessing, they’re much more likely to stay engaged and remain on your site for longer. Increasing the chances of becoming a loyal customer in the long run!
8. Streamline checkout (for ecommerce)
Complex checkout processes are a sure-fire way to lose a customer’s interest, fast. Be sure to simplify checkout by offering features such as guest checkout, auto-fill options, express payments and a range of payment methods to delight your users. Ensure your checkout page is free from distractions and reduce the number of steps required to complete a purchase to ensure the buying process is as streamlined as possible.
9. Ensure consistent navigation
Navigation is one of the most crucial yet sometimes overlooked aspects of UX design. Confusing navigation and an inability for users to find what they’re looking for is one of the main reasons why users will abandon a session. Be sure to keep your menu structure clear, simple and predictable across every page, ensuring consistency between each page is crucial to a successful customer journey. Ensure that primary pages such as ‘Shop’ or ‘About’ are extremely easy to find and utilise breadcrumbs to enable users to go back to their last step, without having to venture through your entire site to get there.
10. Make search functionality obvious and simple
As we touched on above, if a user can’t immediately find what they’re looking for, they’ll probably leave your website, which is the last thing you want! A well-designed search bar should be easy to spot, feel intuitive to use and be responsive and mobile-friendly. We’d always suggest incorporating a smart search feature such as Searchanise which can help speed-up searches with autocomplete, synonym suggestions and more.
Overall, optimising UX to boost engagement is a tried-and-tested strategy that should be regularly reviewed and updated to ensure your site is adhering to the latest guidelines and consumer expectations. Whether you begin by focusing on improving site speed, web accessibility or your checkout, by implementing these tips, we’re sure you’ll start to see your engagement increase in no time at all. If you need a helping hand with web design, ecommerce optimisation or anything in between, don’t hesitate to get in touch and we’ll be happy to help!
