Customer Retention – Keep them Coming Back – 6 Tips – By Dita Bednar

If you’re struggling to make users return to your site, don’t worry, you’re not the only one. Twitter only had a retention rate of 40% when they experienced explosive growth, compared to MySpace and FaceBook who accomplished 70%. It’s safe to say that even the most popular websites experience difficulty with stimulating repeat traffic.

With all the effort it takes to attract fresh users, once you get them to your site, you need to keep them interested. Here are some helpful tips for encouraging your visitors to stick around and come back for more:

1. Attract the Right Audience

In order to get customers returning, you need appeal to the right viewers in the first place. If you’re using ad networks to advertise, you should combine this effort with direct advertising on specific niche websites. Ad networks get you wide reach whilst niche content sites get you more targeted traffic.

You should look for content sites and blogs that would appeal to your target market. You can find Banner Advertising spots for as low as $10 per month.

A great place to find Ad Space is to browse a Banner Auction website.

2. Competitions

Everybody loves to win prizes, especially when the entry is free and without any strings attached. Make sure to provide something appropriate and relevant to your website if you wish to attract potential customers. A free television for example for a diet watchers website would be quite unproductive and most probably a waste of your resources and efforts.

A great example would be a laptop as a prize on your business oriented website. This targets the viewer’s interests. If you just wish to attract as many people as possible, regardless of targeting potential customers, then offer something general like holidays, cash prizes or cellular/mobile phones.

You can use statistics gathered form entry forms to discover more about your audience/target market by using questionnaires. Remember to keep it simple and basic. If you ask too many questions, this will deter potential contestants.

Making your competitions regular is also a good idea. This keeps users interested and coming back to enter. If the prize was one of your products, you may request the winner to submit a voluntary review or ask why they wanted the product. Feedback is always helpful whether negative or positive.

3. Contests

Contests are a great way of promoting brand awareness and discovering more about your target market. For example, for a t-shirt creation site, you may wish to run a competition for the best t-shirt design submitted.

Other ideas for contests include the best review of your product/s, the funniest photo with your product/s or the greatest story about your product/s. Also, offering runner up prizes increases entries as people feel they have a greater chance of winning something.

Here are some more tips for contests:

• Announce the winner on your site and send an email to all entrants advising them of a new challenge;
• Become included on contest sites;
• Provide users the opportunity to send contests to a friend;
• Give an extra entry if they send to five friends;
• Don’t limit the number of entries;
• Give a time limit for accepting entries.

4. Hints, Tips, Trivia & Advice Columns

Providing regular tips on your target audience’s areas of interest is a great way of generating repeat traffic. The advice only needs to be short, perhaps a sentence to a paragraph.

For example, if you run a herbal medicine website, offer a regular natural healing remedy. You can also provide a “thought for the day”. This will keep your viewers returning to find out more remedies or trivia.

Providing advice columns establishes your company as an expert in the field. Remember, people are interested in reading questions submitted by ordinary persons and seeing the guidance that has been given.

Boost your exposure by offering to email regular tips. Provide a ’send this tip to a friend’ option. The more interesting and helpful the information, the greater repeat visits you will attract. Always make sure your content is relevant and appropriate for your audience.

5. Discounts and Freebies

Everybody loves a great bargain. There are lots of ways to provide incentives for return visits. Email newsletters are a great way of ensuring return traffic. Encourage viewers to sign up by offering store credits or a discount on their first purchase.

Providing a weekly specials column can leverage results. Ask users to be notified each time your weekly specials are updated. With each special, provide an option to tell a friend about the special via email.

Give away a small reward for writing product reviews. Reviews provide your site with fresh content and build trust for your products.

6. Discussion Forum

Allowing users to discuss their ideas and experiences will make them appreciate your website and feel like part of a community. Remember to monitor any slander or arguments.

Keep That Traffic Flowing

Implementing interactive and informative aspects to your website will not only add fresh content, but will also attract return visits.

Sustaining repeat visitors has many benefits to your business including reinforcement of your brand, building trust, growing your newsletter and membership sign-ups and obtaining referrals.

About the Author

Dita Bednar is a co-founder of Bidswamp.com, a Banner Auction website where advertisers can buy Ad Space directly from site owners.

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