Comments on: 9 Ways to Keep Visitors Around Longer

By: dennisb

dennisb — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 14:34:10 +0000

Thanks for the tips. I may just ad a survey to retain vistors a little longer. Also I’m considering a very small amount of flash on my “free shipping” tag, to grab the visitors attention a few seconds longer.

By: Eric Brantner

Eric Brantner — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 22:28:28 +0000

Pat–

You’re 100% right. I’ve written about the importance of creating a unique tool for your website in the past, but I have no idea why I overlooked it in this post. Tools are one of the best ways for keeping people coming back time and time again.

Great point. Thanks for mentioning it!

By: Pat Grady

Pat Grady — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 21:24:44 +0000

seriously good tips, but you missed the biggest one, imo. stickiness, which doubles as outstanding link bait as well, necessitates a utilitarian approach. build some tool that solves a problem or entertains, one that can be “used” to do something, to accomplish something.

tools can be guides, instructions, pictures, dynamic scripts that manipulate data of some sort, but all to some end.

i think of it as getting the people hooked on your drugs, make them “users” of your site – they stay longer for sure, return more often, and sometimes bring in others (via backlinking) so they can be users too.

be a pusher… and pull ‘em in.

By: Eric Brantner

Eric Brantner — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 19:50:30 +0000

Cecily–

I really like what you said about what’s right for the visitor is usually good for the search engines. This is something I always preach. People get so caught in trying to please the search engines first that they completely ignore their human users.

By: Cecily Crout

Cecily Crout — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 18:20:35 +0000

This is a perfect guideline to work from when considering visitor retention/usability. These tips are also great for SEO! (What’s good for the visitor is usually good for the search engines.)

I think I would have made it 10 points though, and made #1 ‘Search Term Research’, or mentioned it in your ‘Seek Targeted Traffic’ paragraph. Pinpointing your optimal target search terms is the foundation of effective SEO and driving targeted traffic to your site.