Website owners today rely on the design, functionality and interactive content of their WordPress sites more than ever to draw attention to their brand and grow their following.
After all, a good looking website that provides a seamless user experience is a great way to get people to engage with your content, sign up for your email list, and buy your products and services.
Luckily, with a WordPress website, there’s no shortage of free and premium plugins available to make your site look and do whatever you want it to.
But, with rising competition in niches across the board, content marketers are finding themselves needing to find other ways to stand out besides just publishing killer content.
If you want to know how to make your WordPress website really unique, and one that site visitors will enjoy engaging with, you can start by adding interactive content to your site.
In today’s post, we’ll show you some of the best types of interactive content you can add to your website to boost traffic, maximize user engagement, and become a leader in your industry.
1. Quizzes
Everyone loves taking a good quiz on their favourite website. After all, Buzzfeed is popular in large part because they always have different kinds of quizzes on their site.
Quizzes offer a little fun and excitement on your website, no matter what they’re about.
They can be personality tests, about pop culture, or even offer historical trivia – the point is they’re quick and easy and fun to take.
Besides just being fun, quizzes on your website boost user engagement, which in turn helps your SEO and search rankings thanks to the increase in traffic and longer session durations.
In addition, if you require users to sign in to take your quizzes or reveal their answers, you can turn more people into subscribers, build your email list, and capitalize on that contact information with better email marketing campaigns.
You can easily create a quiz on your WordPress site using free plugins like:
Just make sure to use a content network delivery if you’re going to add a bunch of image heavy quizzes to your website, along with an image optimization plugin like Smush It.
Images tend to take up a lot of server space and load slower than written text, which can harm the user experience, your search rankings, and the amount of traffic that comes to your site.
With both image optimization and a CDN, your content is delivered to users as fast as possible, making people want to continue to take your website’s quizzes.
All the while, you reap the benefits of adding interactive content to your site.
2. Ratings
It’s always a good idea to get some feedback from your site visitors so you can offer them more of what they really want.
And, it just so happens that enabling a rating system on your website gives you an easy way to find out what kind of content people like, which products customers prefer, and how people feel about their experience with your brand.
There are plenty of WordPress plugins, both free and premium, that can help you create an interactive rating system on your website.
However, one of the best on the market is WPForms.
As the most beginner friendly contact form plugin available today, WPForms has pre-designed templates that you can use to add a rating system to you site with.
The rating system you create can be added to any post, page, or widget area (even the footer of your site) using the shortcode generator.
You can enable conditional logic on these forms to find out why people feel the way they do when they rate something a certain way.
You can even add a Likert scale if you’re interested in finding out people’s opinions about products, services, and experiences on a predetermined scale.
And the best part is, you can customize your rating system and Likert scale to ask site visitors anything you want.
For instance, you can ask people about:
- Products they’d like to see available in your online shop
- Events they would like to attend
- How they feel about a certain blog post they’ve read
- How satisfied they are with your customer support team
With WPForms you don’t necessarily have to ask people for their email address in exchange for their ratings.
After all, some people will abandon your form if you require them to subscribe, which will harm your form conversion rate.
Luckily, you can add or remove any form field you want with this plugin so you can ask as much, or as little, of site visitors as you want.
If you WPForms doesn’t interest you, be sure to check out plugins like WP-PostRatings, Rating Widget, and YASR (Yet Another Stars Rating).
3. User Chat Option
Is your website the kind where people share a common interest and might want to chat with others while engaging with your content?
If so, you might want to add a chat function to your site so users can privately message one another, receive notifications about new messages, view chat history, and reply to group chats.
To do this, check out the iFlyChat WordPress plugin.
With this plugin, you can give users a way to chat privately, in a group chat, or even in a chat room. You can also integrate your site’s online support channel so people can get in touch with you too.
Plus, you can moderate the chats so things stay friendly, customize the look of chat rooms, allow people to share files, and get automatic encryption if your site has an SSL certificate for added security.
Adding a live chat function to your website will definitely boost site interactivity and encourage people to spend more time on your website.
4. Post User-Generated Content
There’s nothing more exciting than seeing your own content posted on your favourite website.
That’s why letting site visitors post content to your site is a good way to boost site interaction and increase your return visitor stats.
You can help your site visitors post their content to your website on the frontend with a high-quality plugin like User Submitted Posts.
Found in the WordPress Repository, this free plugin lets site visitors not only add content to your site, but an unlimited number of images as well.
It also comes with a solid feature set that includes things like:
- A Post-submission form complete with name, email, URL, post title, tags, category, images, and more
- The ability to set post status to “Pending,” “Draft,” or “Publish Immediately” so you maintain control over the content that is published on your site
- Easy to use login form with Google reCAPTCHA to prevent spam submissions
- Email alerts when new content is submitted
- Redirect functionality after site visitors posts content to current page or different URL
- Translation into 20+ languages
- One-click filtering of post submissions from the WordPress dashboard
To top it off, and really entice people to submit content on your website, you might even consider creating a system that awards users points or badges whenever their content is published.
Then, create a leaderboard that site visitors can view to increase the competition and encourage more user participation.
In the end, letting users post content on your website is a great way to get them excited to engage with not only the content you and others publish, but their own as well.
Not to mention, the more quality content that publishes on your site, the more crawlers will index your site and display your site in search rankings.
Higher search rankings mean more organic traffic to your site, which also increases site visitor engagement. So really, letting users publish their own content is a win-win situation.
5. Booking Calendar
If you run a business that takes appointments of some kind, you might only need to add an interactive booking calendar on your website for site visitors to use.
As with most functionality you want to add to your website, there’s a WordPress plugin that will help you create, customize, and publish a booking calendar on your site.
This way site visitors can book appointments, make reservations, sign up for consultations, or even participate in upcoming events.
Before choosing a booking plugin to add to your site, here are some of the features to look for:
- The ability to divide bookings into time slots that fit your availability or business hours
- Mobile-friendly design so those on the go can book from phones, tablets, or laptops
- Email notifications that send out to you and your site visitors when a booking is accepted
- The ability to save bookings to your WordPress database or an app like Google Calendar so you can stay on top of your schedule
A free WordPress plugin that will help you create a simple booking calendar on your website is Booking Calendar.
This plugin is easy to use, comes well-documented for when you need help, and has a calendar view for both you on the backend of your site, and for your site visitors on the frontend.
It also comes with built in captcha to prevent spam bookings, email notifications, and mobile-friendly design, which will complement your responsive WordPress theme.
You can approve or decline any booking you want, and rest assured the plugin will never allow double bookings, which can hurt your business.
If you want some options that have more features, be sure to check out these booking plugins:
And if you run an online shop and use the popular WooCommerce platform, you can invest in the WooCommerce Bookings extension, which is perfect for those wanting to offer appointments, services, or rentals.
Conclusion
And there you have it! 5 unique ways to add interactive content to your WordPress site to boost user engagement, increase sign-ups, and even generate more sales in your eCommerce shop.
When it comes to running a WordPress website, it can be tough to stay ahead of the competition, even if you publish consistent content that is valuable, entertaining, and informative.
If you really want to pull ahead of those competing for your target audience, take your content marketing strategies to the next level by adding interactive content to your website so site visitors will start to recognize you and your brand.
Talk to us today to see how we can assist you to achieve your online goals and grow the interactive content of your website.
