Your customers are asking to be engaged by your site, give it to them.

Was in a meeting this afternoon with a client who was testing their site with some users. What we found out was interesting.

The site was rated very positively by 95% of the visitors but they were all asking for one more thing:

Engage us - give us a reason to come back because otherwise we won't.

We've been working with this client for a long time, and have always pushed for more dynamic sites with more timely information - we almost never have gotten that through the design phase because:

"We don't have the resources to keep it up to date."

I honestly don't think that's a reasonable excuse for a $100M+ company. If it was a really small company with tiny budgets, sure, but not here. It's honestly very simple:

Shift a small amount of money away from a single billboard campaign, and you have another resource.

Maybe do a little less online advertising, and hire somebody to keep your online presence engaging.

That way, you're not driving large amounts of people to your site, where they surf around and leave immediately because they're not being given timely information.

User happiness = timely information + engaging website.

User happiness != more billboards + moar online adds that lead to a boring static site.

If the point is to engage the users, then put the resources there and make it happen - there is enough $$$ somewhere, you just gotta find it.

Your users are asking you to engage with them - listen.

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