Published February 2001

Keep visitors at your site with ‘sticky’ content

The first step in Internet marketing, successful Web-site promotion, won’t really do you much good if the visitors you attract leave your site as soon as they get there. Beyond Web-site usability, creating “sticky” content is vitally important for extending Web-site visits.

It would stand to reason that before you can create sticky content, you have to know what your visitors are interested in. It may not necessarily be your product or service. Impulse marketers are well aware of this when they generate last-minute sales to those “stuck” at the checkout counter. The same principle applies to sticky Web-site content.

Keep in mind that the primary reason people come to the Internet is for information. According to a recent study from the Poynter Institute and Stanford University, online reading patterns differ greatly from newspaper and magazine reading patterns. The study found that people reading content on Internet sites tend to focus on the article text first, looking at photos and graphics afterward. Those who read newspapers and magazines do the opposite: look at illustrations first then read the text.

Internet marketers must know what is of primary interest to their potential customers. For example, if you were marketing framed prints, visitors’ overall interest might be how to effectively decorate their homes. Sticky content could be about placing artwork on walls. By providing tips on how to group several pictures together, you may extend visit time and increase personal sales.

Beyond creating your own content, the Internet holds a wealth of opportunities for “free” information. Search for information that relates to your product or service. The author may be happy to share in trade for a link back to his or her Web site.

Professional content providers offer additional sources for both “free” and “paid-for” Web-site content. Screaming Media (www.screamingmedia.com) and iSyndicate (www.isyndicate.com) are examples of the many available paid-for or free content subscription services. These providers use Web-feed technology to deliver content to your site.

You can view a sample at www.dropshipping.net/FREEonlinetraining.htm, where I am offering free online training to Web-site visitors via a free content provider, www.freeskills.com. I simply copied and pasted their script into the HTML of my Web page. The result is a live Web-feed of links to online training programs.

Key evaluation points are:

• Whether the content relates to your visitors’ interests.
• Whether the information really “sticks” to your Web site or transports your visitors somewhere else.

You must track visitor activity on your site to measure the effectiveness of the content you provide. You can purchase tracking software, ask your host if they provide tracking information or use a free service such as www.thecounter.com.

One simple tracking method that requires no scripting capitalizes on a little-known feature of HTML. Whenever you add a question mark (?) to the end of an “.htm” or “.html” page, it has absolutely no effect on the page that gets called up.

That is, if you were to write: “http://www.ifull.com/index.htm” or “http://www.ifull.com/index.htm?ad1,” you would arrive at the same page. However, your tracking logs treat them as two different pages. This is a great way to track visitor response from any promotional link.

By knowing what information is most important to your Web-site visitors, you can master the challenge of providing sticky content and add value to your current products and services.

Be sure to check out next month’s article, which will discuss Step 3 in “Internet Marketing: A Five-Step Plan of Attack” — how to bring visitors back to your Web site.

Debra L. Malmos, AAP, is President and CEO of iFull Enterprises, an Internet services provider for access and hosting, Web-site development and Internet marketing. She can be reached by phone at 360-321-6242. Her Web site is www.ifull.com.

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