You catch more flies with honey. Make sure readers stick to your web site!

When last I blogged, I talked about using your site’s information to either make the sale or to move toward the sale. Now let’s look at how you can use information to keep readers on your site longer.

Little Links That Loop

None of us lingers on a site that isn’t keeping our attention. The more interesting we find a site, the longer we stay. The longer we stay, the more we remember the site—the business, the product, and the person.

Keep readers on your site by offering paths to information. Sure, your main navigation buttons are essential for this. But inside each page or section, you can offer links that will loop readers back into the text.

When reading a book, turning the page is reflexive. Not so on the web. At the end of each page, you reader will decide among several choices:  Pick something else from the navigation menu? Hit the Back button? Go to the Services page? Leave the site?

Help your reader (and help yourself):  Offer a next step. Show a path that will loop them back into your site:

• Be sure one of the last links on your Resources page is a link to your own Calendar.
• Structure your About page so that you can include a link to your Services page in the last paragraph (“I thank my grandma for teaching me how to cook the delicious desserts we offer here at Clara’s Pies & Cakes.”)
• Place a Read More link at the end of topic introduction to move the reader to a page offering a fuller discussion of that topic. (Not every page on your web site needs to be accessible from your main navigation links.)
• A link Back to Top is always helpful on a long page, particularly a page with several shorts topics, such as a list of classes scheduled for the coming months. Getting readers back to the top encourages them to read the page over again, taking in the information more deeply.
• Always provide a link Home:  Never, ever have a web page from which you readers cannot get back to your Home page!

I’m not advocating overpopulating your web content with links hither and yon! If you put too many links on a page, you are encouraging your reader to stop reading and leave.  Avoid that, by all means.  You want the reader to stick around for the whole page, and then move along the path you offer to read yet another page—at the end of which you’ll kindly offer another path…and loop your readers along every avenue your website has to offer.

Next week, I’ll talk about how to provide information from you, the expert, that will keep bringing readers back to your site.