RSSHow to Get Customers to Your Site: Part 6 of 7
Once you’ve provided your customers with the kind of web experience that keeps them riveted to your site, another challenge that you will face is getting them to regularly come back to your site. Most people return to the same websites a staggering 80% of the time while they are online. Don’t let your online business or working from home opportunity be in that 20%! That seems kind of counter-intuitive.
Why is that the case? I think it is because even though marketing gurus will tell you universal, unlimited choices is better for the consumer, the consumer really doesn’t want unlimited, universal choices. The human brain craves familiarity (so much so that people thought they had found patterns in their shuffled playlists) and will want to return to something it has seen before and likes. Sure, we like change and things that are new, but familiarity makes both of those manageable. In other words, once a consumer has found a place that meets his needs, he will come back. This gives you a leg up on the competition and allows you to make the vastness of the internet work for you, instead of against you.
It’s easier to actually see how this works, than to describe it. So, dispensing for just a moment with my normal blogging, let me direct you away my blog to give you an example. Let’s go to: http://www.uscity.net/indexsmall.html, now, if you go to uscity.net you’ll notice that they have updated the site, which is great, but to give you a better example, I’ll take you to the classic view so you can get a better idea of what I’m talking about. At the top, underneath the title of the page, you will see the description, “Internet Business Directory” and in the main area of the page, just above the map, you will see the description “National Web Site Link Directory.” Granted, these are both very vague, but I’m willing to bet that is intentional, because if it were more specific, the site would be very limited in its scope. But this site intends to give you everything. In essence, whatever and wherever you’re looking for something, chances are that you will find it on this site. (Just take a look at the bottom of the page, over 1.5 million links are listed!).
Let’s take a quick test drive. Type the word ‘nutcrackers’ in the search bar on the upper right hand side of the page. Hit enter, and take a look at the results. In seconds you are given a list of state specific directories which contain lists of sites with the word ‘nutcracker’ in it. You can repeat this with any term you want to search. If you were to make it your home page, both you and US City would win. You would be getting directed to the right directory, and US City would be getting another confirmed and committed website to be a part of its searching.
The consumer will benefit from the site if it does its job, and then the site will benefit from more and more traffic. When that happens the site can bargain well with companies to get their pages linked to, indexed, and receive lots of traffic. It’s a great business model for US City, and the lessons from it are clear. If you can get people to consistently return to your website by providing the answers to their questions, or by reliably giving them what they are looking for, which should be relatively easy, then your online business will be successful and you can continue working from home.
Filed Under: Internet Business Tips