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There are many little things that will spice up your Web site to keep your visitors coming back. Learn the tips, tools, and techniques to get visitors
to return to your site again and again.
- • Attractive Web site content
- • How to have your own What’s New page, Tip of the Day, and
Awards page
- • Hosting online seminars
- • Ensuring that you are bookmarked
- • Cartoons, contests, jokes, and trivia
- • Calendar of events and reminder services
- • Interesting bulletin boards
- • Online chat sessions, workshops, and discussion groups
- • Special guests or celebrity appearances
- • Giveaways, awards, and surveys
- • Offline tactics for promotion.
Encourage Repeat Visits
Just as you would want customers to visit your place of business frequently,
so too in cyberspace you want customers and potential customers
to visit often. The more often people visit your site, the more
likely they are to purchase something. You want to ensure that the techniques
you use to get repeat traffic are appropriate for your target market.
For example, if you were having a contest on your site targeted
toward children, you would not want to give away a bread-maker as
the prize. That would be fine, however, if your target market is families
or homemakers. You want to offer something of interest to the market
you are targeting. If your target is business professionals, then something
along the lines of the latest pocket PC that they could use in their
everyday business would be appropriate. If your target market is skiers,
then a weekend in Vail might work. You should always remember your
objectives when doing any form of online marketing, because you don’t
want to do something inappropriate that might drive your target audience
away from your site.
I am a big proponent of leveraging everything you do for maximum
marketing results. Almost every repeat traffic generator provides an
opportunity for permission marketing and also for viral marketing. Make
sure you review the repeat traffic generators you use on your site and
incorporate the right permission and viral marketing elements.
Use a What’s New Page for Repeat Visits
A What’s New page can mean different things to different sites. For
some, this page updates users with the summaries of the most recent
product or service offerings. Your What’s New page
should be accessible from your home page so that when people visit
your site they do not have to search through your entire site to find out
what is new. If visitors repeatedly find interesting additions in the What’s
New section, they will come back to your site on a regular basis to
check out what’s new. Without this, they might visit and search through
your site and find that nothing is new and they just wasted 20 minutes
looking for anything new. Here you can leverage this repeat-traffic generator
with permission marketing by asking if visitors would like to be
notified via e-mail when you’ve added something to the What’s New
section. It’s all about getting their permission to send them e-mail and
therefore include them in your community.
Another approach is for the What’s New page to cover What’s New
in your industry or What’s New in your product line. Whatever it is,
you should always make sure that it is of interest to your target market.
Again, you can ask your visitors if they would like to be notified when
updates are made to this section of your Web site. This once again gives
you permission to e-mail them and present them with new information
that might make them want to come back to your site again.
Free Stuff—Everyone Loves It
Giving things away is a great way to increase traffic—everybody likes a
freebie. If you give something different away each week, you are sure to
have a steady stream of repeat traffic. When you have freebies or giveaways
on your site, your pages can also be listed and linked from the
many sites on the Internet that list places where people can receive free
stuff. To find these listings of free stuff, simply go to a search engine and
do a search on “Free Stuff Index” or “Free Stuff Links.” You will be
amazed at how many people are giving things away online.
You don’t have to give something away to everyone. You could simply
have a drawing every week. You could then ask entrants if they
would like you to notify them of the winner, which again gives you
permission to e-mail them.
If you want to bring only people from your target market to your
site, then don’t give away mainstream items as screen savers, shareware
games, utilities, and so on. Try to give away something that only people
interested in your industry would want. If you don’t care what traffic
comes your way, and any traffic is good traffic, then give away useful
things that everybody needs. Try to have your logo and URL displayed
on the item. For example, a neat screen saver can be made that displays
your logo and URL. When this is made available as a download, there is
no handling or shipping charges associated with it. If your freebie is
something that has your URL on it and is something that is generally
kept around a computer, it reminds and encourages people to visit your
site. A mouse pad displaying your URL is a good example.
You should change your freebie often and let your site visitors know
how often you do this. Something like “We change our free offer every
single week! Keep checking back” or “Click here to be notified by e-mail
when we update” also works well.
Freebies provide ideal viral marketing opportunities as well. Have a
“Tell a friend about this” button near the freebie so site visitors can
quickly and easily tell their friends.
Give a Taste of Your Product with Sample Giveaways
Use a traditional marketing approach and give away free samples of
your product from your Web site. After giving away the samples, follow
up with an e-mail. Ask the people who received a sample what they
thought of it, if they had any problems, and if they have any questions.
Direct the samplers back to your Web site for more information and
discounts on purchasing the regular version of the product. If you have
a number of products, you might consider alternating your free samples.
Ask if visitors would like to be notified by e-mail when you change your
free sample. This gives you permission to e-mail the visitors on a regular
basis to remind them about the sample. You also get to update them
with new information regarding your Web site, your products, or your
company. This can entice them to visit your site again. Make sure you
include your signature file in your e-mail message.
Free samples also provide a great viral marketing opportunity.
Everyone Wants the Best Price—Coupons and Discounts
Offer coupons and discount vouchers that can be printed from your
site. You can change the coupon daily or weekly to encourage repeat
visits. People will come back to your site again and again if they know
they can find good deals there. This is a great strategy to use in conjunction
with a free sample giveaway. If people liked the sample, give them
a coupon to purchase the regular version at a discount. If they like the
regular version, they may purchase it again at full price or recommend
the product to a friend. You can also ask people if they want to be
notified by e-mail when you update the coupons on your Web site. This
once again gives you the opportunity to present them with new information
about your business. Offering coupons is a great idea if you
have a physical location as well as a Web site. These can be your loss
leader to get customers to come into your store.
You can develop a coupon banner ad that links to your site, where
the coupon can be printed. The banner ads should be placed on sites
frequented by your target market. You can trade coupons with
noncompeting sites that target the same market you do. Your coupon
on their site links to your site, and their coupon on your site links to
their site.
By offering coupons from your Web site, you also cut down your
overhead cost because people are printing the coupons on their own
printers, thus not using your paper. Remember that you should have
terms and conditions on the coupons that are available for printing. For
example, you should have an expiration date. Someone could print a
coupon, then visit your store in a year and try to use it. You should try
to have the expiration date close to the release of the coupon. This will
entice the visitor to use the coupon more quickly and then come back
for more coupons.
We are seeing an increase in the number of coupon-related sites
that are appearing on the Internet. CoolSavings.com (http://www.
coolsavings.com) is an online coupon network where businesses can
advertise and place coupons for their products and services. Sites like this are a good way to promote your business, for
they receive a high amount of traffic. Another benefit is that the traffic
is already in a buying mood. CoolSavings.com has been a household
name since it launched its national advertising campaign in the
late 1990s. If you offer coupons from your site, it benefits you to be
listed on these types of sites. If you are not aiming for a national appeal,
you should search to find out if there are coupon networks in the
geographic location that you are targeting. There are meta-indexes to sites with coupons or discounts
from which you can be linked for greater exposure.
Coupons provide ideal viral marketing opportunities—for example,
“Send this coupon to a friend.”
Specials and Promotions
Everyone likes to get a deal. You might consider having a special promotions
section on your Web site. You’ll want to change your promotion
fairly frequently and let your site visitors know: “We change our
specials every week. Bookmark our site and keep checking back!”
You might employ permission marketing here as well: “We change
our specials every week. Click here if you’d like to be notified when we
update” or “Click here to receive our e-specials weekly.” If you send
e-specials via e-mail, make sure you give them a reason to visit your site
and provide the appropriate hypertext links in the e-mail.
Make it easy to have your site visitors tell their friends about your
specials. Have a “Tell a friend about this special” button placed next to
each one of your special promotions. You can leverage the viral marketing
with an incentive: “Tell three friends about our special and be included
in a drawing for (something appropriate for your target market).”
A Calendar of Events Keeps Visitors Informed
A comprehensive, current calendar of events related to your company
or your industry can encourage repeat visits. Your calendar should always be kept up to date and be of
value to your readers. A calendar of events for a band might show their
scheduled appearances. A calendar of events of what is going on in your
business community is very appropriate for a Chamber of Commerce
or Board of Trade site. This can encourage a lot of repeat traffic as long
as the calendar is kept current and complete. Calendars of events are
also appropriate on community sites, because residents access these calendars
often to stay current. Again, you can ask people if they’d like to
be notified via e-mail when you update your calendar of events.
If you have a great calendar of events, you can encourage others to
use it by providing a link to it from their Web site. This offer works well
because you are providing them with great content that is kept current
and they are providing you with traffic.
If you don’t have the time or inclination to develop your own calendar
of events but one would be great content for your site, you might
provide a link from your Web site to a calendar you consider top-notch.
If you do this, make sure your link opens a new browser window rather
than takes the visitor from your site to the referred site.
Luring Customers with Contests and Competitions
Contests and competitions are great traffic builders. Some sites hold
regular contests on a weekly or monthly basis to generate repeat visitors.
Holding contests is also a great way to find out about your target
market by requesting information on the entry form.
What type of contest you hold depends upon your Internet marketing
objectives. If you want to attract as many people as possible to your
site regardless of who they are, then offer items such as money, trips,
cars, computers, and so on… If you want to
attract potential customers from your target market, then give away
something that relates to your products and industry.
You can simply request that people fill out an electronic ballot to
enter the contest. If you want to find out something about the people
entering, ask them to answer an appropriate question or two. If you
want to do some market research, again, ask a question or two. Make
it easy and unobtrusive. The more fields they have to fill out the
fewer people will enter your contest. Be selective with the questions
you ask.
If the prize is one of your products, consider asking entrants to write
a short note outlining why they would like to have the product you are
giving away. You can award the winner(s) with the product and follow
up with the other entrants. These people might be in a position to buy
your products, and you will have gained some valuable knowledge from
the notes submitted.
If your product is appropriate for a prize that would be of interest
to many different types of people, consider finding contest sites that are
willing to offer your product as the prize on their site. This can generate
brand awareness for your product. You can have the site show a picture
of your product with a link to your site. The contest site should be more
than happy to do this because you are offering to give something for
free that adds value to that site.
You can turn a contest into a competition. If your Web site relates
to cooking or baking, ask entrants to submit their best recipe using
your food product. People will visit your site to see the winning recipes,
and you might get some ideas for future marketing efforts. Other
competitions might include things such as best photo with product X,
best short story about product X, best drawing of product X, and so
on. This creates better brand awareness and reinforces sales of your
product. The closer the contest relates to your product, the better.
Instead of offering just one prize, offer a number of smaller prizes as
well. This makes the odds look better and people feel they have a
better chance of winning.
You might have contestants answer three questions relating to your
product or service on the entry form. Of course, to find the answers to
the questions, the visitor has to visit a number of pages on your site, and
the three questions are marketing related.
You can have the contest one where you get information about your
target market. When contestants enter the contest, have them rank what
influences their buying decision. The information you request can also
provide you with demographic or psychographic information.
Allow site visitors one contest entry per day—you’re happy to have
visitors return to your site often. You might consider changing the information
on the contest Web page around the entry form on a regular
basis. Provide links to other repeat-traffic generators such as your coupons
or your e-specials.
Whatever type of contest you determine best meets your marketing
objectives, be sure you encourage permission marketing (“Click here to
be notified when we have a new contest”) and viral marketing (“Tell a
friend about this great contest”). Leverage, leverage, leverage: “Tell five
friends and receive an extra ballot for yourself.”
Make your contest conditional: “Sign up to receive our weekly
e-specials and be included in our drawing for (something of interest to
your target market).”
Before you go ahead with holding any kind of contest, find out if any
legal issues concern you. There may be restrictions that you are not aware
of (e.g., you might be required to purchase a legal permit to hold lotteries).
You should also remember to ask the entrants the e-mail address at
which they want to be notified of the winner. This, again, grants you
permission to e-mail them to tell them who the winner was, and also to
inform them of the specials that you might have at your site that month.
You want to promote your contest through public and private mail
list postings, newsgroup postings, your e-mail signature file, press releases,
and links from contest sites. Some popular contest sites you might
want to be listed from include:
- • Contest Guide (http://www.contestguide.com)
- • Contest Hound (http://www.contesthound.com)
- • About Contests (http://contests.about.com)
- • Red Hot Sweeps Sites (http://www.redhotsweeps.com)
- • Contests and Sweepstakes Directory (http://www.sweepstakescontests.
com)
- • Winning Ways Online Sweeps (http://www.onlinesweeps.com).
Using Employment Opportunities to Increase Visitors
People involved in a job search or interested in new job opportunities
will revisit your site occasionally to see your list of available positions.
Creating Useful Links from Your Site
Provide visitors with links to other sites similar to yours or a metaindex
of links that would be of interest to your target. Do not put outbound links on your home page. Place them down
a level or two after the visitors have seen all the information you want
them to see before you provide the links away from your site. Links can
be incorporated in two ways. The first is where clicking the link loads
the new page in the same browser window. (It replaces the content of
your page with the content of the linked page.) The second and preferred
method is to have the link open a new browser window. (Your
page stays where it is and the content from the linked page opens up in
the new browser window.) This is preferred because once visitors are
finished with the new page, they can close the new browser window
and your page is still there in the “old” browser window. Try exchanging
links with others so you receive a link from their site to your site. As
long as the links are of value to your visitors, people will come back to
see if you have found any new and interesting sites for them to visit.
You might consider asking visitors if they are interested in being
notified when you update your list of links or just make updates to your
site in general. By offering this, if they choose to do so, you have the
opportunity to send people an e-mail message and remind them about
your site while presenting them with new information about what might
be going on with your site.
Investing in Online Chat Sessions
Chat rooms are very popular and, to some, even addictive. If you have
a chat forum on your site, make sure that the topic relates to your business
and that participants are likely to be your target market. To encourage
repeat visitors, you could change the topic from day to day or
week to week. You could also have celebrity appearances in your chat
sessions. These sessions should be regularly scheduled, and the upcoming
events should be posted on your site so that your visitors will know
what is going on when, and will not miss the session if it is of importance
to them. They could be on Sunday from 3 to 5 p.m., or on Tuesday
from 7 to 9 p.m. Also remember to have the information in your
signature file and do some postings through your appropriate mail lists
and newsgroups to promote the event.
You should try to post the topics of the discussions at least a week
in advance so that your visitors will remember to come for the entire
session if they are interested in the topic. You would be surprised how
many people schedule time so that they can chat with someone special
or knowledgeable in an area that interests them. You might also think
of asking your visitors if they would be interested in being notified of
upcoming chat sessions or celebrities who might be visiting your site to
chat. This again gives you the opportunity to e-mail people, at their
request, and present them with information that can entice them to visit
your site again. You can also ask your community whom they’d like to
see as a guest or what topics they would like to have discussed.
Providing a Tip of the Day to Encourage Repeat Visits
Have a section that offers cool tips that relate to your business, your
products or services, or your target market. These tips
can be from one sentence to one paragraph long. If visitors find your
advice helpful, they will return repeatedly to see what interesting piece
of information you have displayed that day. Ask your visitors if they
would be interested in receiving the tip via e-mail or if they would like
to be notified when the tip has been updated so they can then visit your
Web site. Encourage people to send the tip to a friend. You can also
encourage others to use your tip on their Web site as long as they provide
a link back to your site as the source.
Ensuring Your Site Gets Bookmarked
Encourage visitors to add you to their bookmark list. At appropriate
parts of your site, display the call to action “Bookmark me now!”. A call to action is often effective. Make sure the
title of the page that has the “Bookmark me now!” clearly identifies
your site and its contents in an enticing way, because the title is what
appears in the bookmark file as a description. Whenever I see “Bookmark
this site now!” I always consider it. Sometimes I do and sometimes
I don’t, but I always consider it. Often, when the call to action
is not presented, I don’t think about it and don’t bookmark it. Then,
days later when I want to go back there, I wish I had remembered to
bookmark it.
World Interaction with Bulletin Boards
It can be very satisfying to see people join in from all over the world just
to interact with each other on a topic that relates to your Web site. Beware, you will have to keep an eye on the
messages and may even have to play referee occasionally.
Inviting Visitors to Contribute with Surveys
Performing surveys is a way to increase the traffic to your site. For
people to want to fill out the survey and see the results, the survey
topic must be interesting. To encourage input, consider having the
survey results available to participants only. Your survey could be on
a topic concerning current events or something pertaining to your industry.
The more controversial or debatable the topic of the survey,
the more people will visit to contribute or see the results. If you want
to draw a very targeted audience, pick a topic that is of interest to that
market alone.
In performing these surveys, you are building repeat traffic and you
are gathering valuable information on your market. If you hold an interesting
survey every week or every month, then you will retain a loyal
audience of repeat visitors. If your surveys are newsworthy, then you
can send out press releases to publicize the results and gain publicity for
your site.
Your surveys should be short and to the point. Let people know
why you are asking them to do the survey and when the deadline is.
Make your questions clear and concise. The responses should be Yes/No
or multiple choice. When reporting the results, don’t just put them on
your Web page; post the results to newsgroups and mailing lists that
would be interested. Don’t forget to add your signature file. If you are
holding weekly or monthly surveys, let people know via your signature
file what the next survey topic will be and that there is more information
on your Web site.
Again, ask people if they’d like to be notified of survey results, either
by e-mail or by prior notification as to when the results will be posted
on the site. You might also ask if they’d like to be notified when you are
conducting a new survey.
Encourage Repeat Visits with Your Site of the Day
Having your own Site of the Day or Site of the Week listing means a great deal of work, searching the
Internet for a cool site to add or looking through all the submissions.
However, if your picks are interesting to your audience, you might
find that avid Internet users come back every day to see what great
new site is listed. Remember that this must be updated on schedule;
displaying a week-old Site of the Day reflects poorly on your site and
your company.
Keep Them Happy with Cartoons
Displaying relevant cartoons keeps your site dynamic and fun. You do
not necessarily have to create all of the content and features yourself. If
you update this weekly, ask if visitors would like to be notified via e-mail
when you update your Web site. A good example of a site that uses
cartoons is the Myke Ashley-Cooper Cartoons4Fun site (http:// www.
cartoons4fun.com/c4f.shtml), which continuously provides humor to
its viewers. Cartoons provide a great viral marketing
opportunity.
Benefiting from Humor with Jokes and Trivia
“Laughter is the best medicine” and could prove to be a popular feature
of your Web page. People enjoy trivia, or a Thought of
the Day and there are many sources for you to draw
from. Be sure to update regularly. Again, this gives you the opportunity
to ask if your visitors would like to be notified when you update this
section of your Web site and offers a viral marketing opportunity as
well. Always make sure that whatever you include as content on your
Web site is appropriate given your objectives and target market.
Who Doesn’t Love Games?
More and more sites are featuring fun activities and games. Again, your
content must be appropriate given your objectives and target markets.
Just about anything goes
here. You can host anything from a Star Wars trivia contest to having
guests play an interactive game with other visitors. Allow visitors an
easy way to “Tell a friend” about your game.
Keep Customers in Touch with Update Reminders
Ask visitors to your site if they would like to be notified when there are
updates or content changes to your pages. This is similar to a mailing
list except that you write to the “list” only when changes have been
made. This is effective when you have a newsletter or a frequently visited
calendar of events on your site.
Special Events Reminder Services
People can sign up to be reminded of something via e-mail on specified
dates. This feature was originally thought of by a florist
to remind people about important dates. You can remind people
about any number of things relating to your business. If you own a site
that sells fishing and hunting gear, you could get visitors to sign up to be
reminded when certain fishing or hunting seasons start. You should try
to develop a reminder service that relates to something that you sell
from your site. In your reminder you can include suggestions about
what fishing fly works best at this time of the year.
Reminder services are becoming very popular with e-commerce sites.
Their services are very much appreciated by busy people who are not
good with remembering dates. This has saved me on more than one
occasion and made it very easy to purchase from the site that provided
the reminder. I have five nieces and nephews across the country. I have
registered their birthdays with a site that also asked for some details
about the reminder—things like what the date is, the relationship that I
have with the person, their ages, things they enjoy, and how far ahead
of time I want to be notified. Like clockwork, ten days prior to Ryan’s
birthday, I got this e-mail: “Susan, your nephew Ryan’s birthday is in
10 days. He will be 12 years old. Ryan likes PlayStation video games.
We happen to have several that might be appropriate as a gift for Ryan.
Click here for more details.”
I am then able to choose the gift that I want to purchase, the paper
I want it wrapped with, and the text that I want on the card that will be
attached to the gift. Then I simply provide the address I want it sent to
and give them my credit card number, and they send it off. Everyone is
happy, especially me.
Establish Yourself as an Expert with Advice Columns
Some Web sites are incorporating advice columns.
People will return again and again to read the e-mails asking for advice
and to see the responses that are given. This also helps perpetuate an
image of your company as an expert in your given field. | 
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