3. Be Sticky

Keep your customers interested.

Most websites are not sticky. They have poor navigation and are not very interesting.

If you go into many analytics of websites, you’ll find that many, sometimes the majority of visitors leave after one, perhaps two, pages. What does that mean? Either…

They found you, but could not find what they wanted fast enough
Your website was confusing to navigate; they didn’t know where to go next
Browsers (people) are lazy folk
They’re checking out multiple results on the first results (top ten) page, and a competitor of yours just beat you out.

Your website must be easily navigated, clear in message, compelling to read, and create calls to action, and tell (not hint) at what you should click on next.

Now, in most cases, it’s #1 or #2. Most browsers (people) find you on search engines, and most search engines take great care in making sure your ranked correctly. Therefore, for any particular search a browser might do, you’re going against 4-5 other competitors with very similar offers or products.

What it entails.

Your website, after being found and clicked on, must keep the browser’s attention, making it difficult for them to leave. They just want to keep reading and reading, so see if you’re the perfect fit for their search.

Keeping your customers on your website is challenging, but one of the most rewarding steps.

Stickiness is achieved by three main methods.

Creative content
Making it easy to find you again
Analyzing traffic (through programs like Google Analytics)

(be sure to keep scrolling; we have 10 specific tips at the bottom for you!)

Primary Tactics

Creative Writing: Be compelling and clear. Make sure your content is fresh, compelling, easy to navigate, and above all helpful; browsers unconsciously thank you for it by buying, subscribing, or thinking of you as an authority.
RSS: Allow others to subscribe and syndicate your content. That gets the word out there, draws more traffic, and allows visitors to find you more easily to return to your website.
Branding: A clear and intuitive theme should run through your website, including coloration, logo design. Basically, your ‘look and feel’ should remain consistent and match your logo in some way.
Website Tracking: Analyze your past. Do you use website analytics? You should be. By viewing the past, you can find problem pages (that people are exiting your site from) or buttons (that show low click-through on). Often, problems are easy to solve by small changes in navigation or image swaps.
Usability Testing: Test website with people. Often overlooked, usability testing is used to ‘live test’ a website with real people. In doing so, you might find ‘problem areas’ of your website that are making people leave.

Secondary Tactics

Landing Page Optimization: First impressions are important. Not all browsers will land onto your ‘splash’ page. Make sure that every page in your website gives them a clear indication as to where to go next, AND what the page they landed on is about.
Content Building: Text is ‘Google Food’ to search engines; they can’t rank you if you have little content. Make sure you lots of pages, and good content on the pages.

BONUS: Make your website sticky.

So how do you make your website sticky? There are many ways, and all should be employed.

Make sure your RSS and other subscription services are visible and easy to click on. Also, educate browsers on what subscription is best for them (educate them on how to use it)
Great design with easy navigation, a good thematic presence (brand yourself), and solid CSS standards
Let your personality shine through (or peek around a corner, like we do)
In the case of blogs, allow your readers to interact with you, like commenting, taking a poll, etc. This is important. Also, allow readers to ‘subscribe’ to blog comments, which will alert everyone that has ever commented on an article to another comment. And for goodness sake, respond to comments made!
Allow easy syndication of your content (look for the save/share minibuttons below on this page)
Find Gregory on LinkedIn!

Allow others to connect with you via social media sites (if you’re on LinkedIn, then put that button on your site!
Reconnect to other related content on your site; nothing says ‘authority’ like two or three articles in a row that are great sources of information
Create a series of articles that are meant to be read in sequence (Part 1 of 5, Making Your Blog Work for You)
Keep on developing new content on your website, then distribute through your subscription channels; there will always be something for your interested browsers to look at that is timely
Most Important: Write great content. Without a deeper connection to your browsers, without emotionally triggering them, your website just isn’t sticky.