How to create a "sticky" site13 May 2005
A web site is described as "sticky" if it gets visitors to stay for a long time and return often. The benefits of this are enormous - visitors who browse around for a while and keep coming back are exposed more often to your products and services, and are more likely to become customers.
Is my web site "sticky"?
If you have access to the traffic statistics for your web site, you can measure how "sticky" your site is. You need to compare the number of visitors to your site with how many web pages have been requested (ie the number of page views). If you have 20 visitors and 200 page views, on average each visitor is looking at around 10 pages on your site, which is pretty good - large numbers of pages per visitor mean that they are interested in your content, and are exploring and browsing around.
How do I make my web site sticky?
There are two methods of ensuring that your web site is sticky: firstly making sure that your website is accessible and easily navigable (see How to test the usability of your website), and secondly making sure that it is content-rich.
- If you add new, interesting and informative content on a regular basis, your visitors will have an incentive to return - they might be missing out on valuable information if they don't.
- You could put daily updates on your website via a weblog ('blog'), syndicate headlines from other sites, for example the BBC via an RSS feed, or write your own daily news bulletin.
- Informative content could include up-to-date reviews or articles that you've written about relevant products or services. For example, if you're an online wine merchant, you could offer reviews of particular wines, wine-related books or courses, or create some frequently asked questions (FAQs) about wine.
- You could also provide a directory of useful resources, and links to further information - eg jobs in related fields, useful articles or books, or other interesting and relevant websites.
- A discussion board or a forum allows people to post their questions, and get answers from other visitors (and from you). If you’re selling a product or service, a discussion board can act as a good form of customer support, and can also be useful for collecting opinions and feedback. See Developer Shed's tips for starting and maintaining a successful online forum.
- Interactive content, such as surveys, questionnaires or competitions (particularly if they offer a prize of some description), is also attractive to visitors. You can encourage 'audience participation' by setting up a blog which then allows visitors to comment on particular entries. Common blogging software incorporating this feature includes Blogger and TypePad.
- Check out FreeSticky ] for a source of free and low-cost content, such as articles, tips and news, which you can use on your own web site.
