It is estimated that it can take the average consumer 5-7 times to see a product they like before purchasing. So with that in mind, how do you get your website visitors to come back to your site so they can see your product again?

Jay Conrad Levinson, author of Guerrilla Marketing said, "Content is king. Provide what your competitors are not providing. Give your visitors information of value. People aren't as interested in you as what they are in learning."

Here are 6 ways to keep them coming back for more.

1. Contests/Giveaways

Offer a contest or give away a free prize. People love to win stuff. Your award doesn't need to be big or costly to be effective. You could give away something as simple as a free consultation or an ebook to the winner. A great contest idea is to ask the visitor to answer a survey of questions about their interests in your products or services and then they are entered into the contest for free. By having them answer a survey, you automatically get feedback on what your potential customers are looking for.

2. Updated Content

It's good to offer your visitors a place where they can view updated industry related news on your site. If you have a potential customer visiting the more free relevant free information you offer the better. Here are some sites where you can get free updated news and content.

FreeNewsFeed.com - Provides eBusiness and Technology headline news feeds from the E-Commerce Times and general technology news headlines from around the world. http://freenewsfeed.newsfactor.com/

MagPortal - Has over 200 categories to choose from, so you can select listings that closely match your users' interests. New articles are normally added to the feeds within one business day of their publisher placing them on the web, so the feeds are a good source of current information that can improve the stickiness of your site. http://magportal.com/help/free_feeds/

Moreover.com - Moreover is a news feed application that sends fresh news headlines to websites. The best source of dynamic news content available on the web. http://w.moreover.com/

NewsIndex - With the News Index Personalized News Ticker you decide the content, not merely by some vague topic like sports or business, but can focus down to the exact area of interest for your visitors. http://www.newsindex.com/tickercust.html

3. Polls

Visitors often like to give their opinion about something. Offering a quick one or two question poll that changes every couple of days is a great way to keep them interested and coming back to your site. Here are some sites that can help you set up a poll for your website.

Mister Poll - Add interactive polling capabilities for your visitors. Claims to be the Internet's largest online polling site. http://www.misterpoll.com/

Pollit.com - Add surveys, polls, guestbooks, and an ad rotator to your site for free to increase interactivity for your visitors. http://www.pollit.com/

Votations - Polls, surveys, quizzes and database forms are free with many options and with an easy and fast four step setup process. http://www.votations.com/

Zoomerang - Zoomerang has more than 100 professionally-designed survey templates to choose from, including those for business, education, community, and personal/social. http://info.zoomerang.com/

4. Guestbook/Forum/Chat

People love to interact with each other. If you give them a place to leave their thoughts and to talk with one another, most likely they will come back to view what else has been said. There are three basic types of this kind of interactivity.

Guestbook
This is simply a place where your visitors can leave their thoughts and opinions.

Forum
This is a more interactive approach, where someone can start a thread and other visitors reply to the posting in an ongoing fashion. This also a great thing to have if you offer more technical or specialized services, so that your customers can ask you about any technical problems they are having and might even find the answer in a previous posting.

Chat
Most of us know that chat rooms can be highly addictive and most online surfers at one point has participated in some kind of chat. You can provide a cat room for either social purposes (like an online dating site) or for customer service issues, where the visitor can have live help via a chat with a customer service rep.

5. Free Articles

People love free stuff. Even if it's as simple as a collection of industry related articles. If you owned a diet and nutrition company, offering free recipes and articles on weight loss would boost your traffic by getting them to return to your site for more info. It's important to use only relevant material to your website services or products or you will just confuse or irritate your visitor.

You can either write the articles yourself or gather articles from article content sites. Make sure you always include the author's credits at the end so you are not stealing the articles. Here are a few good sites that offer articles on a huge variety of topics.

Article Central - A large directory of almost 4000 articles for webmasters. http://thewhir.com/find/articlecentral/

Constant Content - Download articles, tutorials, and product reviews for your web site. Everything you need to construct a finished website. You can request article subject matter and even get custom articles written just for your web site. http://www.constant-content.com/

EzineArticles.com - Free content for your ezine or website from a variety of popular categories. http://www.ezinearticles.com/

Another good way to gain exposure for your website and start gaining respect and credibility is to write your own articles and submit them to these kinds of sites. There is always a link to the author's website with their name at the end or beginning of each article. It is a great way to add traffic and potentially increase your sales.

6. Membership Sites

There are two kinds of membership sites, free and paid. Free membership sites are usually websites that are tailored to give you content based on your profile and interests. It changes constantly and most people that sign up for a site like this come back to see whats new they can read about.

If you are an expert in your field of expertise and have enough good growing and updated content, you should look into making a paid members version of your website. You could even have a joint venture and offer a wealth of information only available to paid subscriptions.

There are still more ways you can add content to your site, like cartoons, games, quotes or sayings of the day. With a good search on the internet you should be able to come up with lots of free content to make your website a place where your customers love to come back and visit.

Remember that most internet consumers, first and foremost, are looking for free information before they are looking to buy anything. Make your site filled with relevant information and they will be more likely to come back and buy from a site they trust.

Leah West

http://www.westmarketing-design.com Providing complete search engine optimized website design and internet marketing services for your small business success.

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