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by Teri Robnett
(Published in Brainstorm! May 2006)
 Have you ever been looking online for one little piece of information and stumbled on a site that grabbed your attention for hours? Did you add the site to your favorites so you could come back again the next day?
If you want your site to work harder for you, it’s important to give people a reason to “stick around” and brows your site, then come back time and again for more. That’s “Web site stickiness.”
Build relationships
By continuing to deliver valuable information to visitors, you develop long-lasting relationships with them. Whenever they need your products or services, or hear of someone else who does, they’ll think of you first.
Repeat traffic
By making a site sticky, you achieve two things. First, you get visitors to stay and explore the site: read, interact, sign up, and give feedback. Second, and perhaps more importantly, you get visitors to bookmark the site, and transform them from one-night stands into repeat visitors.
Better search engine performance
The algorithm used by most search engines to determine how to index sites includes the activity of the site; in other words, how much traffic the site receives and what pages are being visited. Giving visitors a reason to return to your site, drill down to more pages, and tell others about the site will improve your search engine ranking.
Appearance
Keep it simple. Graphics-heavy, slow-loading pages frustrate visitors who won’t be inclined to look around or return later. Minimizing download time is important. Make sure your site is pleasant-looking on any screen and on any browser. Check the readability of your site and make sure it’s appropriate for your target market. Text that is too small (or too large), is light on a dark or colored background, or simply doesn’t provide enough contrast may be difficult for visitors to read. If they can’t read it, they’ll be gone.
Clear purpose
Purpose drives the structure and content of your site. If product purchase is your site's objective, the site should be structured to give the visitor what they want with as few mouse clicks as possible. If the site is designed for efficiency, you can lead visitors through the process so the average number of pages it takes to complete a task is low. Don’t let visitors get lost in the process.
Intuitive navigation
You want people to spend time on your site, but not because it takes so long to figure out how to find the information they want. They should get there smoothly and easily. Make the journey through your site a magical and enjoyable one - so much so, that they want to tell all their friends and colleagues about it.
Compelling content
The reason people come to your site the first time is to find information about a specific product, service or topic. How compelling you are in delivering the information can determine whether or not someone bothers to read it the first time, much less come back for more.
Keeping your site fresh and up to date
How long has it been since you’ve changed your Web site? Or is the information the same as it was months or even years ago? Why should someone bother to come back to your site and read the same old information again if they got it all the first time? Providing current information that changes periodically is key to getting repeat visits. Adding content management tools, such as Whole Brain's Smart Site Essentials™ can make it easier to keep your site fresh and exciting.
Making your site interactive
Interactivity is now the standard rule for top quality sites. People love to get involved. Provide them with ways to interact with your site to make their experience enjoyable. Add a poll, host a discussion board, or put up an audio version of your latest article.
Take advantage of the latest in technology and you will dramatically add value to your site - but do it judiciously. Nothing’s worse than a site with slow loading games, quizzes that don’t work or unusable gaudy gadgets. If you are going to use add-ons like games, auctions, chatrooms, message boards, quizzes and so on, make sure you choose the best ones. Or better yet, have them developed specifically for you.
All additional components need to function well, every time. Nothing drives people away faster than code that freezes up their monitor or activities that bombard them with pop up ads, ugly layouts or tinny music. Make sure that you use "extras" that actually complement your content - the theme of your site. Create a warm community feel to your site - a sure-fire way to increase your site’s stickiness.
Connect (and reconnect) with visitors
Give visitors a reason to give you their e-mail address, then continue to contact them with information they’re interested in. Send an e-newsletter, post a blog with RSS feeds, or simply send out occasional e-mail blasts that announce changes or updates to your site or product offerings. Be careful not to overload them with useless spam. Remember, they’re trading their e-mail address for information. Constant Contact is a great, easy way to collect e-mail addresses and communicate with your list.
If you're interested in making your web site stickier, please contact Whole Brain Technologies. We can help beef up your content, provide tools that make it easier to update your site, develop databases to store information about visitors to your site, and much more. A Smart Site is a sticky site!
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