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Ways to Keep Your Customers Coming Back For More
By Larry Potter
You already know how important it is to drive qualified prospects to your home business site. What's even more important, though, is finding ways to keep them there once they've arrived.
The information I'm about to share with you will show you how to use content to turn visitors into shoppers… and shoppers
into repeat buyers!
+ Take charge of your content
It's important to spend a few minutes thinking about how often you really need to update your content. If your site sells
reports on housing trends, your visitors may expect new content about the housing market on a fairly regular basis. If you're
selling nails and screws, your content probably won't need updating nearly as often.
If your site isn't going to need content changes on a regular basis, think about writing the content yourself. Nobody knows
your product as well as you do, so who better to write about it? Of course, you'll want the content to have a strong focus on
the features and benefits of your product or service, so here are a few ideas for articles you could post on your site:
Three ways your product can save your customers time.
Three ways your product has saved your customers money.
Interesting or unique applications for your product.
+ Tell your visitors "What's New"
Let's face it… nobody spends even close to as much time hanging around your web site as you do. Your visitors may spend just
a few minutes a month at your web site, so you'd better be sure that their attention is immediately drawn to where you want
it.
If you're introducing a new product or service, it's important to make sure that your visitors know that it's new. Remember,
people scan web pages, they don't read them. They're more likely to pay attention to an item with a "NEW" icon beside it, or
something labeled with the current date.
+ Get Your Visitors Involved
It's a proven fact that the more your visitors interact with your web site, the more comfortable they become. And the more
comfortable they become, the more likely they are to make purchases. Here are three tried-and-true ways to get your visitors
to interact with your site:
Set up an online suggestion box. This is a great way to get your customers involved with your products or services. Let them
suggest products they'd like to see featured, recommend ways to improve your product, or tell you know what they think of
your merchandise.
Run a contest. Ask your customers to submit a short blurb about why they love your product, and offer a cash or merchandise
prize to the weekly or monthly winners. Not only will you be getting your customers involved, you'll be collecting
testimonials to post on your site.
Conduct an online survey. They'll be able to voice their opinions about your business, and you'll learn a lot about what they
like (and don't like) about your products or service.
+ Check "All" of Your Content
Remember, when we talk about content, we're not just talking about the text on your site. We're talking about every single
word, image, link, logo, and e-mail address.
One of the most important things you can do to keep your site current (and drive sales) is to rotate your features and
specials. Is your best-selling product featured prominently on your site? If not, visitors won't find what they came for… and
that's costing you profits!
+ Never Throw Anything Away
Want to know an almost effortless way to make your site 50% more useful to your visitors? Archive your content. A study by
online usability guru Jakob Nielsen showed that an archive of past content increases a site's usefulness by about 50%. And
since you've already produced the content, it's no hassle to simply index all of those articles in an archive. And, believe
me, your customers will be glad you did.
As your archive grows, you'll add credibility to your business, because your customers will be able to see how long you've
been around. With all those extra pages, your customers should be hanging out at your site a little longer -- making them
more comfortable and more likely to buy.
+ Look, Listen, and Learn
So now that you've spent all of this time getting your web site as current as it should be, you need to find out what kind of
impact you've made. Of course, if you've done everything right, you'll start seeing results right where it counts -- in your
bankbook!
There are, however, a couple of other great ways to judge the success of all your hard work. Invest some time in going
through your server logs (provided by your Web host), and see how much time people are actually spending looking at your
content. If, for whatever reason, people aren't using your "Weekly Updates" page, you probably shouldn't waste too much time
writing content for it.
The online suggestion box that you set up is also a great way to measure the usefulness of your content. If nobody EVER
comments on your "Monthly News" section, it's probably not worth your while to slave over it at the beginning of every month.
Having fresh content isn't about having today's news headlines scrolling across the top of your homepage. As always, keep
your eye on the bottom line and ask yourself, "Is this content helping my sales"? If the answer is YES, you know you're on
the right track.
REMEMBER: Marketing a product online means that your home business site is probably the ONLY way your customers will ever
interact with you. What you have posted on your site will speak volumes about the kind of company you're running: a site with
relevant and current information will deliver instant credibility to you and your products.
Keep your site current and your content relevant, and I guarantee that your visitors will start spending more time there. And
the longer they stay, the more dramatic the impact will be on your profits!
Watch Home Business At Warp Speed:
http://www.marketingtips.com/wealthvideos/t/862721
About the Author
Larry Potter is a recognized authority on the subject
of starting a home business with little or no cash. His website provides
a wealth of informative articles and free resources on everything you'll
ever need to know about a home business.
Article Source: http://www.simplysearch4it.com/article/35670.html
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