Made to Stick! 3 Proven Methods to Create a Sticky Website

Many organizations - large and small - struggle with attracting and keeping website visitors, a condition we call website stickiness. A sticky website is one that increases visitor loyalty, improves return visitor rates and ultimately builds customer relationships. This month, we explore three key factors that keep your users coming back for more.

Consider your website the storefront of your organization. In order to attract new business and connect with your potential customers your display should be fresh, clean, relevant and timely. The same holds true for your website; to create and maintain a website that sticks, you need to focus on the content.

Make it Personal. Personalization offers a way to getting and keeping your visitors attention. It begins with talking to your users like you know them, which can be done through meaningful copy and relevant imagery. Through self-identification or the use of browser cookies, your users can quickly and easily identify information that is presented to them based on what they are seeking. Understand what is important to those user groups and give it to them. Customize the vocabulary and general voice of the content to resonate with them.

Offer Insight. Offering "related content", or cross-referencing information within the website, is an intuitive and effective way to get the user more involved with your organization. By offering related content that the user may be interested in, you quickly and easily take them to another part of the website while maintaining a theme based on what the user is seeking. Cross referencing information within the website keeps the user on your website longer, keeps them learning more about your offering, and provides a way to guide your user through separate sections of the website while maintaining a consistent user experience. This has been a mainstream practice for e-commerce websites for a while now, but it is also very effective for other sectors as well.

Keep it Fresh. Providing topical and timely content is what will keep people coming back to your website time after time. A good way to go about organizing and promoting your original content is to have a central location on your website for your communications such as your blog, e-newsletters, and social media. Modern technologies like blogs, RSS feeds, and sharing/bookmarking tools make creating and sharing original content simple, even for the inexperienced webmaster. Creating original, thoughtful content will give your organization a unified voice and your users a reason to return to your site frequently.

Keeping your website content meaningful, relevant, and fresh is a guaranteed way to increasing the length of time a visitor will spend on your website, therefore keeping them interested in your organization and your message. The subsequent improvements in brand awareness and customer relationships will boost your organization’s mission, increase user interaction and return visit rates. If you want your audience to make a commitment to you, then you need to give them what they want: useful, compelling, and value-add information.

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