Sticky Sites

How sticky is your site? The aim of any website is to provide the information that your visitors are looking for, and the more successful you are at this, the more 'sticky' your site becomes. Stickiness is often measured by the amount of time people are spending on your site, and how many pages they view whilst there.

There are numerous ways in which you can make your site sticky and many of them will depend on the content of your site and your target audience.

However, there are some simple ways, whatever the subject of your site is to increase the stickiness of your site.

Add Interactivity
This can include adding a discussion group, forum or bulletin board to your site. Creating a site community is a great way of increasing site stickiness but more importantly to encourage repeat visits to your site. Adding games to your site can also encourage visitors to stay and they may also tell their friends to visit your site. Check out our version of Hangman!

Add Content
Content is an important part of your site but only if it relevant to your target audience. There is no value in adding content to your site if it is not relevant, it may actually deter visitors if they cannot find the information they are looking for.

Ask for Visitor Feedback
What are visitors to your site looking for? Ask them. Set up a newsletter and ask for feedback, or set up a poll on your site to find out what your visitors would like to see more of.

Monitor Your Web Traffic
Which pages are being most visited on your site? Which are the top exit pages? Your site stats are probably the most valuable feedback you will ever receive about your website so it is worth analysing them. For example, review the content on your most visited pages - can you provide more on those subjects? Why are people leaving from particular pages? Links pages are often responsible for encouraging people to leave your site but the websites to whom those links point should also have given you a reciprocal link to drive traffic to you as well. Perhaps people are leaving from a page which is image heavy and they have left before waiting for the page to load?

Check Your Sites Availability
Make sure your site is always working. Visitors to your site who find broken images, links, 404 page errors, or that the entire site is unavailable will not return.

Provide Site Search Functionality
Add a search box to let your visitors search your site easily and find the information they require, especially if you have a site with a lot of content and pages or you have a substantial drill down navigational structure.