How To Keep Prospects Returning To Your Website

Author: Newton Yeager

Getting people to visit your site is a difficult challenge. It is even more difficult to entice people to become regulars on your website. The key to dealing with this challenge is dedicating your time and effort not only to building a website of high standard, but also to keeping it current, interesting, useful, and user-friendly.

Static websites do not hold the interest of either visitors or search engine sites. For this reason it is important to update your site frequently in order to offer something new to visitors on each visit. If you are too busy to research or write new content, try simple things like reposting older, but relevant, articles, or adding new links to videos, articles, blogs, and other websites within the same area of interest. This will convince visitors that your site is updated with the latest information related to the niche.

Don't merely hope that a first time visitor will come back. Repeat visits are earned through much effort. Make your site easy to bookmark. Offer a simple method for your visitors to subscribe to a free newsletter or receive an alert whenever you publish new content. You can also include sharing and recommendation plug-ins. It's much more likely that your visitors will share your site on Facebook, Dig, StumbleUpon, Twitter, or via e-mail with simple sharing buttons.

If visitors to your site wish to return but did not bookmark the site or sign up for a subscription, they will likely run a search for whatever stood out most on your site. Make it easy for them. Use appropriate, well-researched keywords in both the title and descriptions of each post or page. If you fail to label your pages effectively, they become very difficult to identify amidst the sea of webpages that flood the Internet.

Although most people recognize that websites generally need to generate a profit, you should not make your site look like a commercial. Give your visitors pertinent and interesting content so they will feel like their visit was valuable and not just a trip to a high-pressured used car dealership. Advertisements should be tactful.

Similarly, also make sure that subscribers do not find reason to complain. Your emails and newsletters should contain relevant and meaningful information for them, not merely ads. It is natural to occasionally provide a link to a relevant product or give mention of a promotion, new offering, or updated release. At the same time, include information that is not designed to sell anything.

Everyone loves to get a good deal. Giving away freebies is a good way to bring people back to your site. They don't have to be fancy, but can be simple giveaways such as an educational video series, printables, and ebooks. Similarly, notify users of good promotions, coupons, and discounts. Run online contests and offer a meaningful prize to the winners.

Mention all these special offers in your updates and newsletters so that everyone who is interested in your site are aware of these happenings. If you promote your specials through social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, the promotion could go viral.

Whether your site is an informational blog or a business site, people will always wonder what's in it for them. You are likely to get more visitors when people are convinced that the aim of your site is to provide quality content or extra bonuses instead of just a sales pitch.

Contests, opt-in forms, and regular updates are all part of the overall appeal of a site. Unless you have desirable content, all of those other frills are worthless. People will return if you provide them with an incentive to do so.