You want a sticky website. The longer people are on your site, the better, and you can do things to help make it sticky. In the last blog I talked about minimizing (or at least being aware of) links that pointed people away from your website, and I also recommended that you build up links that point to other parts of your site. In this blog, I will continue to give some pointers and ideas to help you create a sticky site. The ideas here are generally useful for most business and audiences, regardless of whether you use a blog or a more conventionally formatted website.

* Break up larger articles into several smaller pieces that require clicking from one page to the next to read. This gets people used to clicking around on your site, which is a good habit you want your readers to have!

* If you want your site’s visitors to follow you on Twitter, use the target=”blank” function to have your Twitter page open in a new tab. That way, they’re still on your site and can return to it shortly after seeing your Twitter page. (Sure, they might click away, but they may still come back to your site).

* Give them a reason to stay! Offer lots of high value content. I shouldn’t have to write this but I’ve visited enough websites with extremely low value content that I’ve decided to include it in my list.

* Use other types of interaction, such as chat, forms, and embedded Twitter updates to keep people communicating with you through your site. Google Gadgets is another easy way to increase the engagement on your site. There are LOTS of gadgets that you can embed to increase your audience’s interest and to hang on to their eyeballs for a moment longer.

* Rather than having a downloadable pdf (like a report or ebook), just keep it at HTML and have it open in a separate page.

* Add a blog if you don’t have one already. A blog is always full of fresh content and is a great way to create a sticky experience for readers.

* Get rid of those advertisements. Yes, you might want to have advertisements and they may be appropriate for your business model, but if you want a truly sticky site and you’re just hoping for a bit of AdSense income as an extra bonus, drop the ads.

Obviously stickiness is not an end to itself. After all, who cares if people spend 2 minutes or 20 minutes on your site? Ultimately, it’s about engaging an audience that pays attention to what you have to say, that shares it with others, and that buys from you.

photo credit: ckl