Five ways to make your website a place worth staying

Teach, and they shall return.

You've seen those websites that are basically one big sales letter, they look great, and quite professional in a slick brochure kind of way. But they really don't do anything other than deliver the smoothest of sales patter. And if you've seen one you've seen them all. After your first couple of visits to these sites, like most visitors, you end up clicking away.

You don't have to sell, sell, sell. Provide info about your products and services, an insight or two, and people will have a reason to stick around.

If your landing page takes more than 30 seconds to load, you will lose 90% of your visitors. This is a fact.

Make it personal

If you have recurring visitors, welcome them by their first name and offer them their own shopping cart/personal shopper. Tweak their experience of the site so that they feel like they are going to their favorite brick and mortar store.

A picture is worth a thousand...

Use product photos of good quality and relevance. Next time you are surfing the net, take a look at a variety of business landing pages. You will be surprised how many contain badly developed photos, or photos that look like they were taken when Elvis was around. End result: your company looks cheap, which doesn't exactly make customers like you.

Get on the telephone.

I know it is the 21st century and the Internet dominates most of the business done in the world, but some customers still like to talk. Don't forget to include a good, working telephone number on the website in a prominent position. And get someone on the end of it who likes talking to the public. This could potentially have an impact on a quarter of your customer base, so do not ignore it.

Remember, your website is your business. Make people stay. You can do it in the real world, so make sure that you do it online.