Resources

Connections Vol. 2 Issue 2 February 2007

Love At First Site

How to Keep Visitors Coming Back to Your Web Site

At Blaine's Business Services, Inc. we work with clients that desire the best value when we are designing and developing their web site. It only makes sense! Having the most bang for your buck is important. The last thing you want is your web site to be sitting in "cyber space" not generating any traffic or visitors and most importantly, not making a positive difference to the bottom line of your business or organization. In our December newsletter, we discussed the importance of having an optimized site. In January, we discussed the importance of ROI on your advertising budget and why to market your web site on the internet, in order to gain relevant traffic to your web site.

So your site has the incoming traffic, however when you check your web site's control panel, you see that people are coming, but they're not staying.

The attention span of visitors is a constant struggle that every form of media has to deal with. The time your visitors spend on your site should be kept to a minimum. Your entire strategy for the site may be complex, but always remember your goal is to get them off the site as soon as possible. You want visitors to find the information they came looking for so quickly, that they'll have time left over to continue browsing other parts of your site. Is that realistic? Will that really happen? If the customer is interested in the content on your web site, then they will continue browsing through it.

Design

Having a neat and clean design is the key. It's been proven that in a fraction of a second, a web site visitor determines if they like your site or not. That's before they get a chance to read the words on your site! With this being said, the design is the first key to getting visitors to fall in love with your web site.

Layout

The layout should be neat and clean. At a glance, anyone should be able to determine that the overall look and feel of your site is that of a business within your industry. For example, if your industry is food related, then having lively colors or an image of your product would be ideal.

Attention Span

A visitor's attention span is determined by the first impression. Have you ever heard, "you only get one first impression?" So make your site design neat and clean. Internet users are able to arrive instantly, but are also able to leave instantly.

To begin with, your site should be clutter free and should not have any flashy animations, popups, or an abundance of graphics. You certainly don't want a boring site, but you want someone to know it is not an annoying site.

Colors

The site should be visually appealing and neatly structured. Your colors should compliment each other. For example, if you have a black background, having blue text would be hard for people to read. People may read it, but it will take them more time to do so. And remember, our goal is to get them to the information as quickly as possible. Yellow text on a white background can be bad as well.

Navigation

After all of the above, your site should already start looking pretty unique. But at the same time you want to conform to certain standards. It's not practical to place a navigation bar on the right side of the screen. Most web sites have a navigation bar at the top or left. For Search Engine Optimization reasons, navigation bars are now being put at the bottom of the page.

Organization & Consistency

A challenge many web site's have is clearly organizing web pages. Drop down menus are becoming more popular and are very efficient for quick browsing.

Consistency is another key component. Be sure to keep your company/organization's branding consistent throughout your site. And make sure the layout of the web site stays the same no matter which page you are on.

You also want to have consistent navigation. If your navigation bar is at the top of your page, then make sure it's in the exact same place no matter which page you are on. You also want to make sure if your navigation bar has Home, About Us, Contact Us pages, the same three pages always display. If you are on the About Us page, the About Us page should remain at the top of the page, even though you are on it. It gives a more consistent look and feel to your site, and visitors will like that.

Quality Content

Content consists of the words that are on your web site. It is the text your visitors read. Keep your content informative but remember to be concise. When it comes to content, short and sweet is the key. People tend to be more visual. For example, if your visitors have the option to read an entire page of text versus viewing a graph, more than likely they'll pick the graph. If you can illustrate information in a graphic or picture it will be beneficial by helping them get through the information more quickly.

Ensuring the quality of each page's content, deciding how much information to put on each page, and clearly organizing those pages are all challenges you will have to work through. But master these and your visitors will be on the path of falling in love with your site.

Update

Updating the site will keep visitors intrigued. Letting the visitors know you update frequently "Check back soon to see what's new" will keep them coming back for more. If your visitors haven't had the chance to look through all of the great information your site has to offer, they will know when they come back to your site, it will be updated. This is the value added that you give to your visitors.

The third step isn't done without first completing the second. The second cannot be done without mastering the first.

If you happen to skip any one of these important steps, then you will not get the results you want. Your result will not be the "most bang for your buck." You simply won't get the results you desire.

If you follow all of the steps above, your visitors will fall in love with your site over and over again, month after month. Keep them happy. That will also generate more business. Even if you're not selling a product, it's marketing your business, your name, your reputation, and your web site in general. Your company/organization's tagline/product will be fresh in their mind.

For a typical web site, approximately 80% of your traffic will come from a search engine such as Google, Yahoo, or MSN. If your site isn't good enough to fall in love with, the viewers will go back to the search engine and look at the list of results that you're listed in, and go with another web site.