Sticky Is Good

By Anne Marie Baugh
Posted Sunday, August 29, 2004

Traffic, traffic, traffic, that’s all we hear. You’d think we were all craving two hour commutes on the Los Angeles freeway. The question is, if you’ve got traffic, what are your visitors doing? In other words, what’s your stick-ability? When people come to your site are they met with a road side sign announcing your business and not much else, or do they have a reason to stick around? If they aren’t sticking, you aren’t succeeding; and you’ve missed the major rule of online engagement- "Information rules on the Internet." If you ain’t got it, they ain’t staying.

So let’s say you’ve currently got yourself Post-It note traffic; the kind that arrives but leaves just as quickly. Boy, the logs look great, but where are the sales? Time for some SuperGlue folks. The kind you can’t get from website bells and whistles. This only comes from content, the kind you have to create. Consider these SuperGlue techniques:

1. Free Advice:

Free advice can be formatted in several different ways. Perhaps a list of articles that the visitors can’t pass up. Not the same old, same old we see everywhere. But fresh, new, material that adds to the education of your visitor. This can’t be beat for making them stick. Make sure one article leads to another valuable place on your site until finally it leads to the sale. Free advice builds confidence in your target audience. After all, how do they know if you’ve got the right stuff if you don’t tell them a little to prove it?

2. Community Chat:

People like people. And we love to get together and talk about our favorite subject. Many online gurus making millions online by first offering a free one hour chat a week. Meet the maker of the site and you’ve built trust in your audience. Invite them to participate and you're no longer the only one making the moves at your site. Let the people get to know you and sales will soar.

3. BillBoards:

Let them have their say. Billboards provide a safe way for the shy ones to have their say too. It’s an inter-exchange of information that often builds the content of your site. It also promotes stick-to-itivness as people who roam the billboards are staying put. They are getting friendly with your site.

4. Learning Tools:

Give your visitors other ways to learn. Books, e-books, forums, shareware, etc. Change your content often and visitors will want to return to see what you’ve added that will be worthwhile to them.

5. The Newsletter:

Yes, the newsletter. The number one tool for bringing your visitors back to your site. If your aren’t capturing them the first time with a free opt-in newsletter, then you have to keep going out and finding them. That’s very expensive. Your newsletter is a permanent link to your clients and prospects.

6. A Treasure Hunt:

Yep, I’m talking a contest in which you give away something free. However, this contest works a little different. By placing a small graphic in different parts of your site each week, ask the visitors to find it and then enter the contest by telling you where the graphic is located. What does this do? It persuades your visitor to play a game and in the process takes them through your site. While they are looking, they are learning about you.

See, it’s not hard to add a little SuperGlue to your Post-It Note and get those visitors to stick around long enough to actually buy!

About the Author
Article by Anne Marie Baugh, owner of Write-Promotion, a company that provides hands-on solutions for E-Commerce businesses as well as publicity services for high profile Internet stars such as Rick Beneteau, John Harricharan, Marty Lund, Rhoberta Shaler, and many more. (http://www.write-promotion.com)