Why Interactive Websites Matter for Small Businesses

Customers want to do business with authentic companies. They want to know they can trust you. There are many ways that a website can instill the trust your clients are looking for which leads to a more successful business for you. Creating a website that is interactive gives you the ability to get feedback from customers while building the trust you want to maintain long lasting business relationships.

While there are no specific rules about what kind of interactive features to have on your website, Wix offers quite a few options to choose from. Testing these features out based on your target market and your business goals allows you to find the best ways for you to interact with your customers and website visitors.

💡Wix Chat

The chat feature allows you a direct form of communication with your website visitors. You can initiate a chat as well as let visitors reach out to you. Adding a FAQs section in your chat gives your visitors all the information they seek quickly. You can maintain your chat via desktop or mobile and set notifications for each. Seeing live visitors and where the pages they are viewing on your website which allows you to give them focused tips and get the conversation going.

To make sure you never miss a lead, you can provide pre-chat forms to collect information such as name, email and phone number. Via the chat feature, you can send discount coupons and attachments (png, jpg, xlsx, doc, ppt, and pdf). Sending direct links to products or services (requires Wix Stores and/or Wix bookings) have never been easier and with the Ascend business plan, you can set your chat hours. Finally, another great feature of the chat feature is that you can allow members to chat with and connect with each other.

🖐Wix Groups Feature

The groups feature allows you to create specific groups around topics that appeal to your target market. Getting them talking and sharing valuable information is a great way to establish your website as the place to go for advice and networking opportunities. You can create posts to start discussions and post business updates and other announcements. Members can customize their profiles and follow other activities. Groups can be public or private (members must join via email) and allow members to invite other people to groups as well as create groups of their own. This is great for SEO (search engine optimization) and to drive traffic to your website.

Another great feature of groups is that you can make sure they stay up to date by sending them weekly roundup emails including top posts and latest activity on all group posts. Groups can be monetized and be set to public or private. You can assign badges for actions like sharing certain number of media, posting a certain number of times, or interacting with other group members. This is a great way to encourage participation in the group. Finally, you can use group add-ons to add to other pages of your website allowing visitors to see all or specific groups you want to promote.

🤝Wix Blog

The blog feature is a great way to encourage community engagement while allowing your visitors to share with others. First, your visitors can sign up/sign in using their email, Facebook or Google. They can then follow, like and share your posts. You can give them access to write their own articles on the blog where they can showcase those articles on their member profile page. They can also customize their member profile. The search feature on your blog allow visitors to search for specific topics, posts, hashtags comments and other members contributions. You can add social sharing features so visitors can share to social media channels increasing reach for your website. A blog offers benefits of you establishing yourself as an expert while encouraging a community type atmosphere on your website where others have a voice.

📌Wix Events

Wix events feature allows interactivity on your website as members can sign up for events right on your website and in addition to offline events like weddings, conventions, or shows; you can add online events. Using Wix live, Zoom, YouTube streaming, Facebook live, online events can be just as fun as offline events. You can create a group on your website specifically related to the event encouraging about members to talk about and share your event with their family, friends, and colleagues. Finally, you can promote the event by offering membership plans, coupon discounts or use an email marketing campaign.

📗Wix Bookings

The bookings feature is not only interactive in many ways but it will save you time in your day to day administrative duties. Members can not only book appointments right on your website, but they can also pay for services. Online payments allow credit cards or Paypal and you can accept in-person payments as well. Through the booking app, you can add discount coupons as well as promote your services by creating email campaigns, social posts, sharing a link, creating Facebook and Instagram Ads, or videos. Finally, you can offer virtual appointments through the booking app using Zoom, Skype, Google Hangouts, Wix's live streaming, Cisco Webex or GoToMeeting.

👉Polls

Adding a poll to your website is a great way to interact with visitors and collect important information for your business and marketing goals. Your visitors will feel like they have a voice and that you care about their opinions. Polls can be tailored to gather market research into what kind of content your readers want to see, what their "problems" are so you can provide solutions, or what their favorite services/products are that you provide. See my post "10 Types of Creative Blog Content You May Not Have Thought About" where I show you 9 other types of creative blog ideas.

✅Wix Subscribe/Promotion Lightboxes

Lightboxes are a great interactive feature that you can quickly and easily add to your website. You can use lightboxes for anything you can imagine. Adding a "subscribe" lightbox allows you to collect specific and vital information for your email marketing campaigns. You can offer a free item to entice your visitors to give you their email and name; plus, set up an automation email to send the free item to them right within the Wix/Ascend dashboard. Adding a promotion lightbox is also a great way to create interactivity on your website. Create a "50% off" or "limited edition" promotion for visitors and link it to a landing page on your website. In doing so, you encourage them to stay on your website longer, purchase products/services while they get something in return. A win-win situation!

📸Wix Shared Gallery

Using the Wix shared gallery element is another great way to encourage participation on your website. You can create galleries of photos and videos, sharing with members and allowing them to upload their own media too. You can enable comments and allow members to download media or tag photos or videos. Members can like and share favorite images and videos. They can also comment, reply to others comments, and react with emojis or GIFs. Finally, you can create and assign badges for members who interact with the shared gallery. You can give them different roles (i.e. student, instructor, expert) or reward them for their contributions (i.e. # of likes, comments or when they reach a particular milestone).

🧠The "Why" Behind an Interactive Website

Your website should be your online home where you can showcase how you solve your clients problems and where you can build long-lasting business relationships. These two key concepts are cornerstones in a small business success. The tips shared here may sound like a lot of work but many are easy to set up on your website and once they are, there are many ways they can help your business goals and processes.

Search engines love an interactive website because the features can be a source of fresh, updated content. Having an interactive website promotes website traffic and the ability to promote your products/services even while you sleep. These features tremendously help with market research in a low-cost way. You can gain valuable market information regarding what your target market like, their problems, and their opinions. The features listed above focus on customer service making it easier for visitors to reach out to you and engage in your website. This builds customer loyalty which is a great source of referrals and continued/future business opportunities.

Several of the features listed assist in time management and productivity of running a small business by automating many aspects of the administrative side of the business. More so; the blog, groups, chat, and shared gallery features promote a community building and engagement atmosphere on your website where you and others can share their knowledge. Finally, these few interactive features are a great way to promote authenticity and transparency for your business while letting you position yourself as an expert in your field.

Do you need some help setting up your blog? Is your current website not working for you? Are you looking to expand your website functionality? Email me with any questions you may have. Want to talk about your project first? Schedule your FREE 1 hour consult. Or just go ahead and fill out my new project information form and let's work together!

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