There are many websites starting up in business on
the Internet every day. The more websites, that get
set up on the Web, the harder it becomes to get traffic
to your site as every site is competing with you to
get as much traffic as they can. It also becomes harder
to get good rankings in the major search engines. So
once you have your traffic, how can you make sure that
a good percentage of the traffic returns back to your
site time and time again?
Some of the things you could do to get returning visitors
are shown as follows:
1. Make sure that your
website gets new content displayed on it on a daily
basis. This gives a reason for your visitors to return
to your site.
2. Making your site very
entertaining is important. This can be done by adding
sticky content to your website, or a bit of humor here
and there, just so that your visitor gets entertained
and it is then more likely to make your visitors want
to come back to your website. Although entertainment
is good, it also needs to be updated on a daily basis.
For example, the games at: http://games.simplysearch4it.com
is being updated on a daily basis. This means that
at least one new game is being added every day. This
gives a reason for the visitors to return to the site.
The more times your individual
visitors return back to your site the more they will
start to get use to it and what it has to offer. This
is very good. This will mean that they will more likely
get to know your brand and also your websites image.
The more they visit your site the more they most probably
like it and the higher the chance of them telling their
friends.
3. Adding a forums or
a place where people can hang out to your website is
another good way of giving people a reason to come
back to your site. This is one of the reasons why sites
like MySpace and a lot of forums get returning visitors.
This is because people like to meet other people and
have a place online to hang out and chat, plus share
things with new people and existing friends, plus they
also like to learn new things.
4. Making your site so
people can easily navigate it is very important. If
your visitors can easily find things on your site then
they are more likely to return, as people don’t
want to be searching for something on the Web for hours.
They want to go to a site and find what they are looking
for in a few seconds. The quicker they can find something
on your site the better.
5. The speed that your
site loads up to the visitor is very important. Visitors
are on the move all the time and don’t want to
wait for a site to load up if it takes rather long.
So the quicker you can make your sites pages load up,
the more chance your visitor will stay on your site
and also return.
6. When designing your
website, it is best to spend more time designing your
websites homepage to what it is with the other pages
of your site. This is because your homepage is where
a lot of your visitors normally visit and is considered
the most important page of a website.
7. Giving your Website
a good name is very important. If you give your site
a name that has nothing to do with your sites topic
or is to long to remember, then there is less of a
chance that your site will get passed on through word
of mouth and also, it will be harder for people to
remember your sites web address and will then result
in less returning visitors to your website.
8. Giving away freebies
is not important, but can actually bring returning
visitors to your site. For example, if you offer game
competitions on your website where your visitors can
win prizes, for playing your games, where they then
compete with other players, then there is more of a
chance that a visitor will play your games, than what
they would with other gaming sites where they don’t
offer prizes to their visitors.