A Visit Isn't REALLY a Visit if Your Company Leaves on the Porch

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What good is your website traffic if your visitors are leaving at the home page? You don't want visitors ON your site, you want 'em IN your site.
Use these five painless ideas for getting ... What good is your website traffic if your visitors are leaving at the home page? You don't want visitors ON your site, you want 'em IN your site.
Use these five painless ideas for getting visitorsINTO your site. 1.
Establish your site's main goal.Your website can have several different goals, so long as youdon't try to achieve each of them at once. For instance, say youwant your site to attract more subscribers to your ezine, securenew customers for your products, and attract repeat visitors.Pick ONE of those goals to focus on the hardest, and make theother two secondary goals.
If you're relatively new at designingeffective websites, start out by focusing on one goal ONLY, andforget the others until the next go round. 2.
Use home page lead-ins to content-laden pages.If your primary goal is, let's say, to secure customers for a new your product, you can lead visitors into that product in severalways. Here's an example:Write an article on the general subject matter of your product,including an eye-catching title -- read: HEADLINE -- for thearticle.
Then, create a page for it on your website. On your homepage, post the first few sentences of that article with a link toread the rest of it on its own page.Better yet, you could leave your article excerpt hanging in midsentence to entice your readers to click deeper into your site to read the article.
(Just be sure the article page loads fast.)Here's an example of an effective article excerpt lead-in:--- In only one day, I had over 400 new visitors clamoring their way into my website. I didn't use search engines, ezine advertising, or spam, and it didn't cost me anything -- not one thin dime.
So how did I do it? What was the FREE... Click here now to read the rest of this article!---If you've targeted your lead-in to attract your average visitor,who WOULDN'T want to go read that article? 3.
Change your home page content and/or layout often.Nearly every time I redesign or add new content to my site, I see an increase in activity. (Whether that increase is in sales, page views, etc.
depends on exactly what I've done to the site.) Youdon't want to change the look of your site TOO much, or you'llhave your visitors heads reeling. Maybe once every few months issufficient, but test to see what works best for your particularaudience.If you're updating the content, on the other hand, you never cando THAT too much.
Your only limitation is how often you have time to add new content to your site. For instance, I normally add new content on my newest site every two weeks.
Each time I release anarticle for reprint, I announce it in the "What's New" list on my home page, and post the article itself in the article directory. 4.
Be creative.When thinking of new ways to lure visitors into your site, thepossibilities are endless. For example, look at e-Business Moms.
Bina, the Webmaster, describesher home page lead-ins as if they're areas of her site, but thelinks ACTUALLY lead to articles.When visitors click on that initial link, they want to learn more about the topic the article covers. They end up reading (or atleast skimming) the article, subconsciously starting to establish Bina as an expert in her field, and perhaps then seeking out MORE of her articles to read.
Jackpot! 5. Eliminate clutter and distractions on the home page.I don't know how many times a day I go to a site that soundsinteresting, but ends up being a hideous conglomeration ofdisorganized links, cramped advertisements, and loud colors thatmy eyes STILL see after I'm long gone from the page.Ouch! What a way to send your visitors hightailing it.Giving your visitors too many options means that they're leavingon the first page.
Loud colors that make your visitors' headsbleed mean that they're leaving BEFORE the page finishes loading. Look again at .The site is a nice soothing white and blue, with brighter colors used sparingly.
There's absolutely no clutter, and the text andgraphics are engaging -- not frightening. All in all, Bina sets awonderful example of a site that presents an inviting atmospherefor increased visitor retention.
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