Making Your Site Sticky... And Using It To Its Maximum Potential
I am a very big fan of using the web to create greatness. One of the most fabulous examples of a "sticky" website is Google. Without breaking a sweat, you can learn the answer to almost any burning question, locate the perfect graphic, and even find your way to Grandma’s house. Google is also one of the easiest sites in the world to navigate and understand. Low maintenance... totally intuitive.
Since we are professional web developers, my own company has added "stickiness" to our website, in part by freely giving away 1-page and 5-page websites. We created a little online wizard that lets anybody create their own personal or small business website at no cost. (For details, see www.urangatang.com/freesites.) That little online tool lets the recipient log in and create or update their own free website. As a result of this constant activity on our site, we’ve made our own site very "sticky."
When a website is "sticky" it means that the site is constantly busy... people keep coming back to it, they bookmark it, and they send their friends to it. Probably the most famous example of a truly great "sticky" site is Yahoo. Those folks give away practically everything. You can get an email address there, check tomorrow’s weather, and find out about local traffic conditions, all at no cost.
Now, I am not suggesting that you give away free email addresses. What I am suggesting is that you take the useful information in which you possess a unique expertise, and make it as useful and interactive for others as possible. By implementing at least one great online tool that has significant value to your customers, you can completely jump out of that great melting pot called "the competition."
For example... a local chamber of commerce could let all of its members post their upcoming public events on the chamber’s website for free. They would save those members a fortune in advertising, help those members position themselves for greater visibility, cement those members’ loyalty (paid, by the way) to the chamber, and simultaneously turn the chamber’s website into a heavily trafficked, truly valuable web space. As word of mouth travels, there will eventually be a demand for paid advertising space on that chamber’s site. That single relatively smallish investment in web technology will have greatly, inevitably rewarded its owners.
Here’s one more example... for the coordinator of a senior living center. You have the ability to use the Internet in a truly magnificent way. You can build a site that posts all of the available recreational events online, lets members register for those events, lets them schedule their visits to the salon, to the massage therapist, and even build out an online community board so that seniors and their families can interact electronically.
This material is Copyrighted. All rights reserved. Linda C. Uranga-Norton,
President and Founder, Urangatang Web Design. To obtain reprint
permission or engage the author for speaking engagements,
please contact the author at
. All reprints must include a link to the author's website
at www.urangatang.com.
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