Make Your Website Sticky

Generate Website Traffic That Returns Again & Again

When you understand how to make your website sticky, you'll generate website traffic that comes back to your site over and over... which is the true definition of a sticky website!

Your visitors – or customers – are the lifeblood of your website success. Of course, the best way to connect with your visitors is through your words... your content. But when you go beyond that initial connection in building relationships, you'll reap enormous benefits.

I'm talking about what is known as "website stickiness", which means that your website attracts visitors to come back and also keeps them on the site once they get there. How many sites have you visited only once, either because you got what you wanted or you couldn't think of a reason to go back?

But I'm sure you've also discovered some websites you find yourself going back to again and again. That's what I'm talking about when I say you need to learn how to make your website sticky. It isn't enough to just get people to your website. You have to generate website traffic that wants to return on a regular basis. That's the essence of online home business success.

Tips to Help Make Your Website Sticky

I'm going to cover some general principles on making a sticky website, but for more details on the various methods, be sure to follow the links in each section, OK?

As with all the types of strategies on this site, I urge you to try one method at a time, waiting to move on until you've mastered that method. It's called focus.

Give Your Site an Attractive Look and Feel

A lot of new online business people think they have to have a slick, professionally-designed website and that's just not true. Your site doesn't have to be fancy or contain the latest technology to succeed. But... it does have to be attractive enough to keep people coming back. So, the colors need to be pleasing (not garish), the layout needs to be simple, consistent and common sense and the focus needs to be on your content.

Learn more about how appearance affects website stickiness

Make a Personal Connection with Your Visitors

The first step in building relationships is to establish a level of trust and credibility. When you set up a website, you are – in effect – saying that you are some sort of expert in that niche topic. Somewhere on your website, you should "prove" that fact by establishing the terms of your expertise, which could be through life experience, education, research or a combination of one or more of those factors.

In addition, when you "tell your story" so to speak, you can't help but connect with people. They'll start to feel they know you and that'll make your website sticky and keep them coming back.

Get more information on establishing a personal connection with visitors

Make Your Pages Load Fast

It's a sad fact that people who surf the Internet want what they want... and they want it fast. People with dial up connections get tired of waiting for "heavy" pages to load and people with fast Internet connections expect that speed everywhere they go. Having too many graphics or photos on a page is one of the most common ways to make it heavy and slow to load. Lots of javascripts can do it too. And don't get me started on Flash!

If you don't ensure that your pages load fast, then you'll find that people won't wait around. Click...

Find out how to speed up your page load times to make your website sticky

Provide a Guided Tour

Along the same lines with people being impatient is that people want to know what you're offering as soon as they get to one of your pages. They don't want a lot of fluff and they don't want to have to search for the information they're looking for. So, get to the point and get there quickly!

Some sites off a sort of guided tour to move people through their sites. This can be especially effective if you're reaching out to different subgroups of a target market. There are different ways to go about this...

Learn how to guide people to the information they want and need

Offer Quality Content

There are millions of so-called content websites out there today that offer crap... in my opinion. Please excuse my frank talk, but do you get as frustrated as I do when you Google a search term and find tons of websites that offer very little original information and clearly seem to be there for the sole purpose of putting ads in front of your face? Or that contain absolutely no content relevant to the search term?

That really gets my blood boiling, I can tell you! This strategy is so dead easy, it's unbelievable. Just write meaningful content for your pages that relates to the keywords you use and that is truly helpful in some way. I doesn't have to be college thesis-worthy; it just has to be real, if your goal is to make your website sticky and keep them coming back.

Learn more about generating quality content for a website

Provide Well-Organized Navigation

Have you ever gone to a website and...

• You couldn't decipher the navigation labels?
• There were so many nav buttons, it was overwhelming?
• The navigation wasn't listed in a logical order?

Those are just a few of the things that can go wrong with navigation. But believe me, if people can't figure out how to get where they want to go, you'll lose a lot of your website stickiness. Great navigation is essential, but two stop-gap measures are to include a site search box in a visible place on every page as well as a link to your site map.

Find out more about using navigation to make your website sticky

Make Your Site Interactive

This is a great way of adding website stickiness, because when visitors can interact actively with your website, they tend to stick around longer. Things like polls, quizzes, etc. can work great here. You can also get them to subscribe to your newsletter (ezine) or an email course. Ask for feedback throughout the site. If you can, ask people to leave comments right on the site.

Get tips on making your site interactive

Build Community

Social networking has gone mainstream in the last few years. No longer is it just for teens and young adults. Even my elderly mother and aunt are on Facebook! Sticky websites make sure they offer opportunities for visitors to network socially, via forums, interactive forms, ability to make contributions to the site, becoming your fan/friend, etc. Creating an "insiders only" type ezine is another way of building community.

Most of us like to feel we are part of something. That sense of belonging is a strong pull, and if your website can help meet that need, it will succeed.

Learn how to build a website niche community on your site

Keep it Fresh

If nothing ever changes, it's easy for website content to grow stale, even if it's evergreen type content that will always be relevant. People won't keep coming back to your website if there's never anything new to see. What would be the point?

So, it's important to keep adding new content on a regular basis, even once a site is fully built out and goes into "maintenance mode." Adding new stuff is best, but even updating or rewriting the old stuff will work. Writing a blog can help keep things fresh. So can allowing visitor contributed content. Contests can be fun too.

Get more ideas to make your website sticky by keeping it fresh

Give Away Free Stuff

Web surfers love to get stuff for free, especially if what you're giving away has real value. Short reports, free software and tools, etc. all work well. It's OK to ask sometimes for their web address in return, by putting them on your mailing list or newsletter list.

Get more ideas for free giveaways that can make your website sticky

In Summary...

When you focus on website relationship building, you will soon find that you have succeeded in building sticky websites that have solid and long-lasting appeal to your target audience. You might say that knowing how to make your website sticky by building relationships is key to your online home business success.