Website Elements That Drive Engagement

Driving Emotional Engagement and Buy-In

At Audiology Engine one of our core beliefs is that every website we build should drive engagement and trust in it’s viewers. We use very modern designs in our website builds, making them both responsive and adaptive. Responsive simply means that the websites will display in a suitable manner on all screen sizes. Adaptive pertains to some elements being designed to only appear on smaller devices and being invisible on large screens.

We also use a lot of more modern animated features, some designers stray away from them because the java script to run them can be heavy and slow down a site. Because we have designed our own platform and we adapt the script it is not an issue for us. This allows us to introduce the engagement features in a manner which grabs attention. Movement captures the attention of the human eye, draws it in. We believe that these web elements can be used to drive engagement and trust.

Value Propositions

We use this simple rule to ensure that all of the value propositions that we include in a site are optimised for notice. When we speak about value propositions we mean statements or proofs of value or perceived value for a prospective viewer. These can also be hard differentiators for a particular Practice. Most value propositions are based on service offering, not product, although we include a lot of content in our designs in relation to product. We only do so for strategic SEO reasons, we don’t see product as a value proposition in any real way.

Value propositions may be presented in sliders, parallax sliders, videos, photos or static quotes. In this way we try to lessen product in the equation and drive service offering as the primary come on and differentiator. As a professional, I have always felt that this should be the case and Steve as someone who has been hard of hearing for life knows it should be so. So why doesn’t our profession accept it? I digress, that is an argument for another day.

Social Proof

The second major element that we always include, everywhere we can fit is social proof. I have spoken before at length in relation to social proof. Some people even listened! Social proof is an extremely powerful element and we really do try to place it everywhere. However we do it carefully without repetition, so that each instance is new to the viewer. Again we present social proof in sliders, parallax sliders, videos, photos or static quotes and also tickers. Tickers are basically moving numbers, so many Patients seen, so many hearing aids fitted etc.

The most powerful social proof is Patient testimonials, the most powerful Patient testimonial is a video one. However you should use everything you have, quotes, quotes with photos, full testimonials, full testimonials with photos and sweet sweet video. We also try as much as possible to make the testimonial or social proof relevant to the page that it appears on. Again the relevance makes it more powerful.

Good SEO Principles

Of course you would expect us to use good SEO principles, that is the nature of what we do. Good SEO can also be seen as an element of social proof, not the SEO work itself but the position that the SEO puts you in on a search return. The attitude is becoming if it’s good enough to appear at the top of Google, it must be good enough. We have also introduced schema.org meta into all of our site builds, I think we will be the first to do it, I may be wrong, its just I haven’t come across a hearing healthcare site using it.

Some people poo poo metas, we think they have it wrong, meta titles and meta descriptions are important. They are not the all powerful but they are important. We really believe that it will help drive our sites, it won’t do it in isolation but aligned with everything else it should give them an edge. That is what web design is about, there is no one thing, no silver bullet, it is a mix of a lot of different elements that deliver an end result.

Integrating them in Your Site

Hey, this stuff freely available and it is easy enough to get your head around with a bit of time and some trial and error. You should really think about trying to implement value propositions and social proof in your site. You should most definitely consider the meta information on your site and you should look at schema.org meta. You will be glad that you did.