How can you make your website a visitor magnet?
Making your site "sticky" means persuading your visitors to stay on your site for longer whilst encouraging their return. Customer attraction is one thing, customer retention (and ultimately conversion) is quite another.
Add new content on a regular basis
Probably the most important thing you can do to stimulate revisits to your site. Your content should include all your important keywords and key phrases. Give visitors a reason to bookmark your site by providing free regularly updated information that is worth returning for. You can attract visitors with keywords and key phrases, but you will only get them back if you give them exactly what they want. You have to earn customer loyalty.
If you don't ask, you won't get
Ask for feedback. You may even receive testimonials that you can use on your site. (Please e-mail me with feedback about this page.) You can also ask for the e-mail addresses of your visitors by offering to inform them of any updates to the site, industry news or future special offers.
Newsletters or ezines for your visitors
Ask your visitors to subscribe to your free newsletter providing them with up to date information on your industry, product, services, special offers etc.
Keep the amount of information you ask from a potential subscriber to the bare minimum, i.e. just ask for their e-mail address. Long forms disincline your visitors to sign-up. After a period, you could start to ask for more information and compare the sign-up rates.
Your newsletter will encourage subscribers to revisit your web-site whilst building brand loyalty and trust through familiarity. This will help to eventually convert these subscribers into customers.
Surveys
Find surveys in the media that are relevant to your industry and include them on your site. Ask for permission first.
Devise your own surveys relevant to your industry or site for your visitors and encourage people to come back to view the results.
Prized possessions
Competitions also provide your visitors with a reason to return to see if they have won.
Offer prizes and invite your visitors to enter your competitions in exchange for their contact details. Every entrant therefore becomes a sales lead, though you should be aware that a high percentage of children enter internet competitions. If children are not your target audience you might want to set an age limit on the contest.
Bookmarking
Encourage visitors to bookmark your site and encourage them to use your site as their start page. Call your visitors to action, many will respond. Several thousand visitors bookmark my sites each month.
Attract attention to the bookmark link on the page by a sudden change in format. For example the sentences below stand out more because they are "centered" instead of "left aligned".
