We are all striving to get more traffic to our sites, but once you get people, how do you keep them coming back for more? Filling your site with so-called “sticky content” is the best way to ensure that your website benefits from repeat visitors, rather than always having to work hard at winning people over for the first time. Repeat visitors are much cheaper than new visitors in terms of effort required to get them onto your site. How do you measure “stickiness”? There is no hard and fast measure, but good indicators are comparisons of your number of site visits to unique visitors in the same period. You can also use programmes to see how many people are adding you to their browser favourites. Once you know your stats it’s time to work on them. So, what exactly are the best ways of generating sticky content?

There are two main approaches to making people return to your website:-

Making them feel “part of” the website, so they want to come back

Making them need to come back

These two approaches are combined on most sticky websites. To make life easier, here are a few tips for making your site sticky:

1. Make your site user-friendly
The user is king. It doesn’t matter how much information is on your site is or how cool the graphics are. If a visitor cannot find their way round your site or just finds it frustrating to use, the likelihood of them returning is next to nil. Invest time and effort in making your website user-friendly. Figure out what it is that people actually want from your site and make it easy for them to find it (as well as anything else you want to show them). Start a programme of user-testing to get real data on how people use your site. Make your visitors’ website experience a positive one and it’s guaranteed that they will want to come back.

2. Keep it fresh
If someone has already seen everything on your site, there is no point in returning. To keep people coming back you need to give them something new for every visit. Content must be fresh and regularly updated. No changes for a few weeks is a sure way to stop people coming back. You can be smart with this. Keep the most viewed pages changing and ones deeper in your site can be left must longer, or even left untouched and archived for reference.

3. Give your users the information and tools they want
The internet is most peoples’ major hunting ground for information. Sites that provide information that people actually need are guaranteed repeat visits, for as long as people need that information. Simple. The snag here is that you need to put in the effort to ensure the information is what people need and is up to date. Its got to be free and really useful to guarantee repeat traffic. If you are selling products or services provide information which relates to and supports what you are selling. Protocols, articles, free information of any sort is always valuable. The same thing goes for tools and widgets. Anything free and of value to the user. News feeds are also a great way of keeping people interested in an otherwise static website By getting to know you a bit better you build trust and can quickly turn visitors into fans.

4. Get other people to add the content
Forums, chat rooms and polls are a source of free new content for your site. They also make the visitor feel part of your website community, ensuring they return to check what’s new. If you’re really successful, visitors will talk to their friends about the site and invite them to visit too. The multiplier effect will ensure that traffic grows and the more successful it becomes, the more people will return. As with all content, the key to this kind is to keep it fresh and high quality. Forums may need moderation (no, they REALLY need moderation) and remember, nobody is interested in a forum with only one member!

As search engines improve their algorithms to provide better and better search results it becomes harder and harder to guarantee that people will return to your site because it is so easy for them to find a better alternative. To keep on top of the game you have to make sure that they need to come back to you. It doesn’t matter if it’s because you have the information they need, because they feel part of your site or just because yours is the only website they can find their way round. They’ll come back.

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