www.images-magazine.com APRIL 2022 images 27 BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT you to identify and fix any problems that may not have jumped out at you initially. Use the data to make website improvements Understanding how users engage with your website is just the first step. Next, you should start to implement changes that will make the user experience more seamless. If you notice that users are spending a lot of time scrolling down your homepage to find what they’re looking for, you might want to start by reorganising the page so that the most valuable content appears nearer the top. If users are relentlessly ‘rage clicking’ something that looks like a button but isn’t actually clickable, then you should try turning it into a button with a useful link. When the button’s been set up, you can then use the goal tracking in Google Analytics to measure whether or not this was an effective change. Other ways that you can improve website engagement include simplifying the site navigation, adding more calls to action, improving page loading speeds, and optimising on-page content to reach more relevant people. Keeping users engaged with your website is vital if you want to generate sales and enquiries. Nowadays, the search engines are very competitive, so if your website doesn’t provide users with an engaging space to shop... they’ll simply go elsewhere. Measuring and improving website engagement should be an on-going process. You can’t expect to make a few changes and keep users engaged for a lifetime. With that in mind, let’s take a look at some of the different ways you can measure and improve your website’s engagement. Set up tracking in Google Analytics Google Analytics is a really valuable tool for tracking website engagement. Not only can you see how many people visit your pages and how quickly they ‘bounce’ off, but you can also track the performance of key elements of your website. By using the goal function, you can tell Google Analytics to track a variety of things including how often a button is clicked, how often people visit the ‘checkout’ page, or how many times a built-in feature (like a calculator) is used. Once you’re gathering data, you can start to analyse the way that people behave on your website. Then you can make informed decisions about website improvements. Use third party tools like Crazy Egg Crazy Egg is another tool that you can use to track how users are engaging with your website. Once it’s installed on your website, Crazy Egg will show you where people click on the page, how often they ‘rage click’ on something that isn’t working, and how far down the page people scroll to find what they’re looking for. As you can imagine, these kinds of insights tell you a lot about the way in which users engage with your website. They help How to measure and improve website engagement I wonder how many printers are going to dip their toe in the web 3.0 space? We have so many transferable skills to easily transition into this new era of technological advancements: we know about artwork, mock-ups and selling design. We understand demand and creating retail experiences for people. We are also business people who understand the need to create value and be a producer and not a consumer. I have an NFT [non-fungible token], a unique digital item such as a piece of art, music etc, that exists on a blockchain] project cooking up which I am excited about. I have also made and purchased a few NFTs to make sure I understand the whole lifecycle of creating, marketing and selling them. Brands are already setting up stores in the metaverse and smart contracts are being used to add experiences to real world purchases. It’s only a matter of time before we’re asked if the shirts we print could be made into NFTs for our customers. As the next wave hits it is a good idea to at least purchase one so you too understand this huge, expanding marketplace and don’t get left in the real world. The fun part of NFTs in particular is the community building aspect that they can create. The holders of these NFTs are becoming ambassadors and are very devoted to their clubs. Would your business benefit from its customers Web 3.0 and the print industry becoming club members with private chat rooms and forums? This is why almost every NFT project has its own exclusive group on Discord [a group chatting platform]. Holders can chat about the latest release of products, or talk directly with the founders. I think as shop owners we can borrow from this by creating and grouping our customers together. That way they can feel heard and part of our community, under our banner. Chessie Rosier-Parker is director and studio manager of Squeegee & Ink, a screen printing and embroidery studio that also provides pre-exposed screens and film to garment printers along with social media workshops. www.squeegeeandink.co.uk/ learn-to-screen-print Lauren Debnam is from ETrader, one of the industry’s leading suppliers of websites to garment decorators across the UK. www.etraderwebsites.co.uk
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