Business Learning Center

Everyone knows how hard it is to attract visitors to your site. In previous Business Learning Center articles, we’ve discussed how to get visitors through search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (pay per click).

But getting visitors to come to your site is only the first step. Once they’ve arrived, it is your job to keep them on the site for as long as possible and then to encourage visitors to keep coming back again and again. This is the essence of what is called stickiness.

What are the key elements of a sticky website?

Fresh Content

This may seem obvious, but there are many sites where the content rarely, if ever changes. While a beautiful design or a great story may attract visitors once or twice, it soon becomes boring and the visitor is lost to you forever.

• Make sure you rotate your featured products on a regular basis (for e-commerce web sites)
• Make sure you rotate images and video on a regular basis
• Write articles related to the interests of your target market
• Link to articles related to the interests of your target market

WebMD.com is constantly adding new content to keep loyal visitors coming back for more.

Blogs

A well-written, informative, and entertaining blog can be a magnet for visitors. Like a favorite columnist in a newspaper, your blog can be a destination spot for loyal readers.

Your blog can serve several purposes:

• It puts a human face on your company
• You can provide truly useful information- the kind that builds trust and brand loyalty
• You can provide information not directly to your business but of interest to your visitors

A blog requires a real commitment. Unless you update frequently (at least weekly), you will lose your audience. If you blog effectively, the time invested will be well worth the effort.

Blue Fountain Media uses the BFM Blog to attract visitors, tell them about our business and provide information that is truly useful for individuals interested in enhancing their web presence.

They will anxiously return to your blog expecting fresh articles on a regular basis and you must deliver on this promise. Visitors will soon grow impatient with a blog that isn’t updated on at least a weekly basis.

For more details on effective blogging for businesses, READ THIS.

Practical Resources

Visitors to sites appreciate information they can use. By providing practical information to visitors, businesses reap myriad rewards:

• It helps to brand the business as a source of great information
• It can  help turn visitors into customers by funneling the visitors directly from the information provided to buying opportunities
• The information provided on the site can be picked up by other sites, thus garnering even more traffic to the site and better placement on search engine results (SEO value)

Blue Fountain Media provides such practical information in the Business Learning Center (which you are reading now!).  Another site making great use of resourceful information is The Vitamin Shoppe. They sell vitamins and supplements online, but they also provide practical medical and health information to their visitors:

The Vitamin Shoppe provides practical medical and health information to their visitors

If you don’t have the expertise or resources to create your own resourceful information, a great idea is to provide either “Industry News” or “In the News” areas on your website. Here, visitors can link to information that addresses their specific interests. While this may seem like a detour from your site, it shows your visitors that you are looking out for their interests and makes them more loyal to you.

User-Generated Content

A great way to engage visitors is to encourage user-generated content. This can come in many forms:

• Discussion boards
• Guest blogs
• Reviews
• Photo sharing
• Testimonials

Not only does user-generated content increase stickiness, it can be a terrific tool for customer service. By listening to your visitors, you can learn about your strengths and weaknesses.

Obviously, not all of these are appropriate for every business.

Polls, Quizzes and Surveys

For whatever reason, people love polls and surveys. Everyone wants to let their voice be heard. As with other online content, try to create a poll or survey that relates to the interests of your target audience.

• Entertainment sites have polls on the Oscars
• Sports sites let visitors choose the MVP
• Financial sites ask visitors what their biggest financial concerns are
• News sites ask visitors for their favorite news stories of the week

Facebook uses polls to increase stickiness.

If you have any wonders about the sticky power of polls, just look how Facebook utilizes them to engage their visitors

Personalized Information

If you want to create visitor loyalty, it helps when you make them feel special. By turning visitors into registered users, you can gain valuable information about them and target content specifically to them. Through the use of cookies, you can learn visitor preferences, behavior and history. Armed with that information you can target special offers, discounts and drive them to areas on your site that would be of most interest to them.

Of course, nobody does this better than Amazon.com, which keeps track of your browsing history, your purchase history, and your ratings to create highly personalized recommendations for you.

Increase revenue and brand loyalty with personalization

This kind of personalized treatment leads to both brand loyalty and increased revenues

Social Media

The likelihood is that your visitors are well ensconced in the social media world. They Tweet, they have Facebook pages and are truly LinkedIn. Every business should be similarly tied into the social media network. And just like user-generated content on the site itself, it provides an excellent opportunity for customer service and reputation monitoring.

A great way to leverage this audience is to have your social media outlets easily accessible on your site. A live Twitter feed, for example, is a great way of showing your visitors who’s talking about you at any given moment. More importantly, it keeps them on your site!

In Conclusion

Attracting visitors to your website, getting them to stay and convincing them to return are a huge challenge.  By providing your visitors with a host of sticky features you give them reasons to be loyal. Repeat visitors turn into prospects and prospects turn into customers/clients.

At Blue Fountain Media, we work with our clients to make their sites as sticky as possible. Using web metrics and analytics, we can demonstrate quickly to clients how new features and content on their sites translate into more page views, longer time spent on the site and more repeat visitors. If you are interested in discussing stickiness or any other web design or online marketing issues, please contact us at 212.260.1978.