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HOW STICKY SHOULD YOUR WEB SITE BE?

by Susanna K. Hutcheson

From the very first Web site to make an appearance on the Web in early 1993 until the present, having a “sticky” site has always been thought to be the litmus test of a good site. If you didn’t have a chat room, a guest book, perhaps a horoscope and some news and other items to keep folks on your site, you simply wouldn’t make money with your site. Well --- that’s simply not true! Not only is it not true, but a sticky site of this nature will actually cost you sales.

Let’s examine what you want your site to do. Now all sites are different. My site sells a service. What do I want my site to do? I want it to inform folks about my service. I want to tell them my background, my experience, my fees and what I can do for them. My goals are to get them to sign up for my free mailing list, to call me for information or to request a quote online. That’s all.

I don’t want them to click off my site and go visit some other site never to return to mine. But that’s what many people do when they put up a lot of links and areas of their site totally unrelated to their core business.

Folks don’t come to your site for news. They don’t come to your site to read a horoscope. They don’t come to your site to join a conversation with other people. They don’t come to your site to find links to all sorts of other sites. They come to your site for whatever it is you advertise. All they really want to know is what you can do for them and if you’re the best person or have the best product for their needs.

Anything you offer them that doesn’t fit in with this demand is taking business off your site. You don’t need people to stay on your site for an hour if they don’t buy or don’t call you or don’t take some action that you want them to take. If you pay for clicks, you pay for each of these visitors who may land on some other site at your cost.

So how sticky should your site be? The answer is simple. Make your site just sticky enough for to get people to take the action you want in regards to YOU AND YOUR PRODUCT OR SERVICE! It’s okay to have a short resource page and exchange links with other businesses with which your prospects might do business. But don’t have a ton of links on your site unless they’re people you exchange links with. It’s fine to put things on your site that will promote you and your business. If you have an ebook that promotes you, let folks download it free. The same goes for a screensaver or some well-written articles.

You only have a short time to get people interested in you, your product or service while they’re on your site. Get to the meat of your product or service and don’t lose them. If you wanted to get a cute dog to follow you home you would put a piece of meat in your hand, not lettuce. It’s amazing how many sites use lettuce as bait when they should be offering meat! So offer the meat and drop the lettuce. You’ll get a lot more business if you do!

Susanna K. Hutcheson is a professional advertising and direct mail copywriter. She was the first copywriter to utilize the Internet as a place to market this type of service. Susanna has clients all over the world. She writes everything from Web site content to direct mail and radio spots. Visit her Web site at http://www.powerwriting.com. Her email address is powerwriter@powerwriting.com. Telephone: 316-665-7626.

© Copyright 2006 by Susanna K. Hutcheson and Power Communications LLC. Any republication in any manner is prohibited without the consent of Power Communications LLC or the author. We do give you limited permission to use this article on your Web site or in your newsletter if you print it or reproduce it exactly as it appears here including this entire notice. This article cannot be sold by you or published in a for-profit publication, a pay-per-view site or a site which sells memberships. It cannot be used by schools or in textbooks without our consent in writing. Rights to use this article for a purpose other than the type of distribution for which it is intended may be purchased from us. Call us at 316-665-7626. You may, however, link directly (not by redirect) to this article.