As a new bride some years ago, cooking would have been listed under weakness on my SWOT analysis chart.
I didn’t enjoy the process and I didn’t have the patience for it.
Cooking things like meatloaf and homemade biscuits I especially loathed because it required getting my hands dirty and sticky.
Fast forward a few years and you can add cooking to my strengths column; I learned sticky fingers are just a part of the creation process.
As much as I hated sticky fingers there are some things that deserve to be sticky.
Your Website should be sticky and the stickier the better.
What exactly is a sticky Website you ask?
A sticky site attracts and retains visitors and some sites are well, stickier than others. For example, entertainment sites are very sticky for the “news” or content they distribute. TMZ would be considered a very sticky site.
Your product or service may not draw the traffic as if you were reporting some celebrity’s untimely passing but you can influence your industry and your market by learning the fine art of being sticky.
Increasing your site’s stickiness factor
- “Play that funky music white boy” – Some Web templates have background music options but what they don’t have are volume or mute buttons. Give visitors the option to control your site’s music without having to adjust their own volume controls and then make those controls easy to find.
- The power to skip – If you have a flash or animated entry, allow users to skip your intro especially for repeat visitors.
- A fresh approach – subject matter is bound to be duplicated but it deserves your approach and insight.
By simply being you, you add freshness to the subject matter and search engines will appreciate your approach and reward with you favorable rankings. (There are pages of articles that talk about sticky Websites but mine as far as I know is the only one that approached from cooking standpoint.) Being you works in your favor. - Design matters – Make your site easy to navigate and it should be aesthetically pleasing. Not everything needs to be in Flash but a site full of bullet points isn’t very engaging either. Be sure to use relative photos!
- Answer questions – If you’ve researched your audience and communicate with current customers you should have a pretty good idea of want people what to know about your product or service. Go ahead and answer them with a FAQ or links to other areas of your site that answer those questions.
See, being sticky isn’t such a bad thing! It’s actually desirable and the stickier you are the more opportunities you have to tell your story and hopefully create raving fans and brand loyalists.
