Net Success
Five simple web tips to keep them coming back
How do the popular websites and blogs keep a steady flow of traffic? There have been many answers to this question and a myriad of articles written to try and tackle the problem. Increasing the flow of traffic or “stickiness” of your website can be a difficult task. To make the effort easier, the list that follows contains five simple tips that will help you keep your users returning to your website.
1. Keep your content up to date. There is nothing that turns away traffic like an article that is so outdated it is no longer useful. Your visitors will simply hit the back button and find a site that is more current. Up-to-date content also has a positive effect on search engine traffic, which can also bring new users.
2. Keep it simple. Your average web surfers are looking for the fastest way to find the information or products they need. If you make it too complicated or cluttered, your visitors will get frustrated and not return.
3. Make the information on the site useful. An entire article or book could be written about this step. The main idea is to look at your site from the user’s perspective. Is the content well-written and relevant? If there are interactive features such as videos or audio clips, are the required plug-ins easily accessible for those who don’t have them? The resources on the site must be useful to keep your users coming back.
4. Cross-browser testing. As much as web developers would love for all web browsers to be equal, this is certainly not the case. For untested sites, the site may range from unsightly to completely unusable. The first step in maintaining consistency across browsers is to validate the code. Checking your site is as easy as visiting validator.w3.org and typing in the URL. Secondly, the site should be tested in as many browsers as possible in order to make the experience consistently positive.
5. Attract the right visitors. Too many sites want to attract traffic from anyone and everyone, and pay no attention to the quality of the traffic. These sites will get plenty of traffic, but have very high bounce rates. Make sure your SEO and marketing efforts are pulling in people that are actually looking for what you have to offer.
Keeping visitors returning to your site is an ongoing process which requires a great deal of patience and a lot of work, but applying these five principles will get even the least “sticky” of sites some returning traffic. You can also hire an interactive agency to boost your social marketing efforts, and have them optimize your existing campaigns.
What an alluring blog post about search engine optimization. I’m frankly incredibly amazed that that hasn’t been articulated before to such an extent.