Capture And Keep The Attention Of Website Visitors

How You Can Build a Website That Captures and Keeps the Attention of Visitors

While some would argue, a quality website design and strategy for luring in visitors will not be enough to make your business completely successful. There is another key ingredient in it all. You also need to be able to get your visitors to take a taste of what you have to offer and get them to want to come back to your website for more. To do this, you need to be able to treat each and every one of your customers as unique individuals. Luckily, the World Wide Web provides you the ability to do this thanks to being able to personalize easily and inexpensively for even start-ups and small businesses.

With a little effort, you can successfully and effectively address your visitor’s needs. Utilizing a combination of offline strategies – like sending out a free newsletter or offering BOGO specials when customers haven’t been in the store in a couple of months – and ecommerce tools that are readily available, you will be able to personalize in a way that nothing else possibly can.

When it comes to customization, the basis is the cookie, which is a piece of data that informs websites of where visitors go. Along with an HTML page, a cookie is sent to the browser when a web user visits a website. The cookie is then saved by the browser to the customer’s hard drive. When they come back to the website, the cookie will return to the web server with the brand new request, which will enable your website to identify the return website visitor.

Based on those stored cookies as well as email analysis, here are a few marketing program ideas that you can come up with:

• Send out postcards to customers who have not recently purchased anything from your online website, offering a $10 to $20 reward for buying something online.
• Send out new promotional emails several weeks or months following a customer purchase.
• Offer customers a chance to win a prize and make sure it is easy for visitors to enter the contest on a weekly basis.

If it seems too complicated to personalize things, it is still possible to design your site so that it “speaks” to varying groups of individuals. For example, if you are a real estate agent and you need your website to meet multiple needs, you can develop a screen with buttons like the following:

• If you are interested in buying a home, click here.
• If you are interested in listing your home for sale, click here.
• If you would like to join our team, click here.
• If you are a real estate agent from outside the area, click here.

This particular form of customization allows you to address varying needs to of multiple groups of individuals. You will have made a valiant effort to offer information that is tailored to different market segments, and it won’t have cost you an arm and a leg, yet it will have increased your efficiency and credibility.

Now, while it is important to get visitors to come to your website to begin with, it is just as important to make them want to stay on your site and explore. Here are a few tips to help make this happen:

• Make Some Connections – Try hyperlinking your e-mail address. In doing so, you will ensure that web visitors only have to click on your e-mail address to send you a quick note rather than having to copy and paste it into their e-mail client.
• Just Have Fun – Some people that are surfing the web are simply looking for a good time. While wild and crazy isn’t necessary, you just want to make sure that your content is presented in an original and entertaining format. Be you!
• Add Some Value – Make sure that you are always providing something useful and valuable to your web visitors. Some websites offer recipes, while others make it so they can track their own packages. You may want to make it so that customers can play games, download forms, have access to forums, or something similar – just offer some with value that will make them come back.
• Keep Things Simple – You don’t have to go overboard when building your site. In fact, sometimes less is more, so keep things on the simple side. Yes, it is true that users enjoy surfing, but they will get bored if they have too much information to sift through to get to what they are looking for.
• Offer Up a Map – You need to make sure that there is a clear navigation map by using button bars and icons. If your site is designed right, there will be a button near the bottom of every page that will allow users to go back to the homepage, and/or easy navigation in the footer area.
• Give Something Away – Contests are always intriguing for customers because who doesn’t love to win something, right? Have a registration form to fill out for those who want to participate, which will also provide you with information on who is visiting your site.
• Make Payments Easy – If you are selling products or services online, you want to ensure that it is easy for your customers to pay you. You should consider not only having an online order form, but also a phone number and email readily accessible.

For more tips or if you have any questions, reach out to us at WebDetail and we’ll be happy to share our insight with you.