Let’s see… your site gets thousands of unique visitors per day, and you say it’s good. Sure, it’s good, but it doesn’t mean that your site is liked by all of them.

Try to analyze it more. Your site gets visited by a lot of different people daily, and you’re there looking at your site’s statistics and celebrating. But what you don’t realize is that those visitors stay on your site for less than 5 minutes and never come back again. Now that’s pretty sad.

You need to do something to get some quality visitors who are interested in your website, and you MUST make them visit your site frequently. We call this kind of traffic “returning visitors”.

What do you get when people visit your site often?

There are a lot of benefits that you get when your site generates returning visitors. You develop a relationship with them and you get more than one opportunity to sell your product to them.

By giving your visitors a high-quality service, you can earn their trust. If they trust you, there will be bigger chances that they’ll purchase your products and even recommend your site to their friends.

How do I generate returning visitors?

Nowadays, people surf the web because they are looking for something specific, not to try out new stuff. They are also impatient — they want to find what they are looking for right away, and probably won’t spare some time to look around and search for hours.

To generate returning visitors, you must know how to present what you are offering on the spot. Beating around the bush won’t do. If you’re selling something on your website, tell it at once. Don’t offer to give free stuff then put something like “The information above is just the introduction. If you want to know more about this, buy the product for the amazing price of $1,245″ at the bottom part of the page. Your visitors will hate you for that. And they probably won’t visit your site again.

You must also build content-rich pages. People visit your site because of your content, not because of anything else. The reason why they return is because they like what you’re offering. Give your visitors valuable information. Be certain that the information is clear, well-written and precise. Be original and unique — provide something that your competitors aren’t giving. That way, your visitors will like you and may even add your site to their favorites.

Keep your information fresh and up-to-date. If possible, update your site thrice a week (or more often). Web surfers go to the internet to look for the freshest and the latest news and bits of information. If your visitors find out that your site is regularly updated, they will visit your site often to know what’s new. Otherwise, prepare to lose your your precious visitors.

Your entire site must have one unified look. Changing layouts per page will simply annoy and confuse your visitors. Make sure that your website is easy to navigate and that information can be easily found. Remember, people want the information fast like fire, they don’t want to waste time by searching for what they need.

Make your site neat (just like the image on the right), simple and professional. People generally do not spend more than a minute on a page unless they found what they exactly wanted. If your site looks complex and is hard to navigate, no one would spare time to find that button which leads to another page. But if your visitors are comfortable with how your site looks, they’ll love it and there is a high possibility that they will return to your website. Keep in mind that people would only buy products on sites that are trustworthy, they will never purchase anything on crappy looking sites.

Conclusion

Keeping your content fresh, being straightforward and being professional are the keys to get returning visitors. If they like your site, they’ll come back and that’s for sure. If they don’t, don’t expect to make any sales to them.

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