It has been said that ‘dot com’ companies spend 70% of their marketing budget on getting new customers and only 5% on keeping them on their website once they are there. This can be fatal.

It is easy to concentrate so much of your resources on getting your website listed in search engines, marketing your Web product, and getting the visitors to come, but if you’re not giving them what they want, they’ll quickly leave and possibly not come back.

How do you keep them on your site?
It is all too quick and easy for a website visitor to navigate away from your site. That’s why you want to make it “sticky”. Making a site sticky means that you are giving your readers what they want, and giving them a reason to stay on the site.

There are several techniques you can use to make your site sticky:
• listen to your readers – find out what they want, and then give it to them.
• build community – when your readers feel like they are a part of something, they’ll stay longer.
• create content – content is the reason that people come to your site, and why they will stay.

Many sites liken multiple clicks with stickiness
Website visitors tend to skim through a page, picking up on headlines or key phrases that grab their attention. You cannot expect them to scroll through paragraphs (or, even worse, pages) of text to find what they want. Similarly, they won’t click and click and click around a website to get the information they are looking for. You need to present information that is quick and easy to find, and to read. If you have a lot to say, spread the content over more than one page and create easy to navigate links.

Next week…Listen To Your Readers