Video, strategically placed links are among 8 ways to keep readers engaged

By Jack Neary

Content Manager

Chartbeat

Brooklyn, New York, USA

Connect

There is always room for improvement in audience engagement.

This is especially true when you consider 45% of readers who load an article will leave within the first 15 seconds, and more than 60% of those who leave will not return.

So, how do you get readers to stay?

Here are eight strategies to incorporate today.

1. Design for mobile audiences

According to our most recent global audience insights, three out of every four pageviews across the world occur on a mobile device. In Central and Southeast Asia, it's even higher at 87%. With that in mind, it's high time to start prioritising the mobile-first reader journey.

2. Strategically place related links

To show off your depth and quality - and keep readers engaged longer - place related links at strategic points in your content to encourage deeper visits. One of the best ways to determine where you should be placing recommendations is by measuring scroll depth to see where your visitors are leaving the page.

3. Be aware of the 80/20 rule

The average Web site gets more than 80% of its engagement from just 20% of its articles. Does this mean you shouldn't cover the other 80% of news? Of course not, but it does make a case for deprioritising less popular topics in order to spend more time and resources on a fewer number of high-impact articles.

The other opportunity here is to diagnose where engagement is falling short on the under-performing articles and optimise those pages to increase reader activity.

4. Add video to your pages

Our research shows that, rather than taking attention away from text, video actually increases engagement with the whole page.

To understand how video engagement affects a visitor's interaction with the rest of the page, we look at scroll depth, a measurement of the amount of a page's content the visitor has seen. On average, visitors scroll 33% further on pages where video content is viewed, indicating that video viewership also increases engagement with text.

5. Be mindful of word count, up to a point

We've found that, between zero and 2,000 words, the average engaged time increases as word count increases. Once word count grows beyond 4,000, however, the variability in engaged time also grows, and the return on additional length is less certain.

6. Pay attention to categories

In one analysis of visitors to news and media sites in the Chartbeat network, we found more than 70% of site visitors read two or less categories of news per month, and 40% read only one category. This means the average reader will be more likely to recirculate to articles within the same category than popular articles with unrelated topics.

7. Take a lesson from Google Discover

When we added Google Discover to our real-time and historical dashboards last year, we found average engaged time across all content types was 29 seconds while the average for content served via Google Discover was 37 seconds.

The tailored recommendations Discover is known for has proven to keep readers on the page longer. This is a tactic that can be utilised elsewhere in your audience engagement strategy.

8. Extend the lifespan of your articles off site

When we look at the lifespan of articles in our network, two clear patterns emerge:

1. Most articles reach 80% of their pageviews within 24 hours.
2. Almost all articles have run their course 48 hours after publication.

What this doesn't take into account is that engagement doesn't happen solely on owned channels. Plenty of conversations around breaking news and cultural trends happen on social media where news publishers can foster community, reach more news consumers, and grow their brand.

Experiment, measure, and repeat

No one strategy will work for every audience, but the more effort made to improve the audience experience, the closer you'll get to finding what works for you and your readers.

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About Jack Neary

Jack Neary is content manager at Chartbeat in Brooklyn, New York, USA. Jack can be reached at [email protected].

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