To be successful with your websites, visitor retention is a very important topic that you need to consider. It’s always easier to convert a returning visitor into a paying customer as they build up an element of trust as they come to know and love your site. They will eventually stop doubting your credibility and keep coming back for more.
Some of my favorite methods for maximizing visitor retention are as follows:
1) Start a Blog (also known as a Web Log)
You’re probably already familiar with blogs. It’s essentially an online journal that lives on your own website and relates updated news and information to your visitors. We’re all naturally curious people and we love to read blogs which update on a regular basis. A blog can also add hugely to your credibility as it lends substance to the notion that there’s a real person behind this website, and not just some faceless business!
2) Keep Your Content Fresh
Whenever a visitor returns to your site, they want to have something fresh to read. Since we’re focusing on visitor retention here, it should be obvious that you need to update your content frequently in order to deliver on this. This method has been proven to be one of the most effective ways of getting people to come back to your site, but it’s equally that method that few webmasters use. Think about it – no-one wants to browse a stale site that doesn’t change for months. Laziness is not an option!
3) Give Your Visitors a Platform
By creating a forum or a chat-room of some description, you immediately create a place where visitors are encouraged to stay on your site and interact with other visitors. Conversations will tend to grow naturally and as they do, your members will start to feel a real sense of community which will keep them coming back day after day.
4) Ask Their Opinions
The easiest way to get feedback from your visitors is to ask questions. These can be asked via your blog, but it’s often more effective to use pools or surveys in order to make the experience more interactive. They not only provide a means for your visitors to air their opinions, they also give you great content by way of the results that you can later publish back to the very people who participated. This encourages visitors to return just to see what the final results were.
5) People Love To Play
It’s quite easy today to add puzzles, quizzes or games to your website. We all know how often office workers like to put things off and play a quick game, so it should be fairly clear that something engaging like this can be a real draw. If you do this, consider making it a competition so that, for example, the person with the highest score wins a prize.
In order to maximize your visitor retention, you can either sit and hope (not a great strategy) or you can implement these 5 top tips. I encourage you that my tips are better than “hope” alone!
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