How ‘sticky’ is your website?
July 31, 2006
When I am talking about ‘stickiness’ (in the context of a website,) I am talking about how long and how often people visit your website.
When you have a real ‘sticky’ website, people will spend more time on it, come back often and will bookmark (add to favorites) your site.
If your website is not sticky, it’s almost pointless to make any effort to get traffic to it.
WHAT CAN YOU DO TO MAKE A WEBSITE STICKIER?
It comes down to a few things:
- Keep the website layout simple.
- Keep the website layout consistent throughout the site.
- Have concise and clear writing.
- Have interesting and entertaining content.
- Stay on topic.
I think the first 4 points speak for themselves – we all know that you should have your ‘home’ button and other navigational elements in the same spot on each page …
That said, I think point #5 needs to be expanded on a little.
WHY STAYING ON TOPIC IS KEY.
One mistake website owners can make, is to try and cover many diverging topics on the same website. This may seem like a good idea, but all it does is confuse your visitors, presents a bigger challenge in terms of organizing the content and finally, it dilutes search engine traffic.
I AM GUILTY OF THIS ERROR
I knew about staying on topic years ago and because of this, I started creating micro-sites that were topic specific. But then, I went nuts …
Killersites.com started to grow in all kinds of directions … soon I had:
- PHP articles
- Photo galleries
- Web design articles
- Web site monitoring
- Page Rank meters
… and all kinds of other stuff.
I should have kept it clean and simple and concentrated on the thing that killersites.com was all about: web design and creating killer websites.
MICRO-SITES
Because of the content-creep found in killersites (it has too much stuff buried in deep dark holes,) I’ve started to create my new and topic specific micro-sites.
Each web site deals with a particular topic and does not diverge. So far I have these websites out:
- www.killerphp.com -> teaches web designers php.
- www.killerajax.com -> teaches you how to use ajax.
- www.killeractionscript -> teaches, yep … Flash Actionscript.
… I still also have the classics:
- www.how-to-build-websites.com
- www.csstutorial.net
- www.secretsites.com
MICRO-SITES ARE ‘STICKIER’
To prove my point, I can share one very interesting web statistic with you: the percentage of people who bookmark my websites.
Consider these numbers:
- killersites.com -> 18%
- how-to-build-websites.com -> 33%
- killerphp.com -> 90%
- csstutorial.net -> 92%
There are many factors that go into affecting these numbers, but a major factor is found in the focus of the content.
For example:
The majority of people bookmark (add to favorites,) killerphp.com because the website is ONLY about php … and that’s why they are there.
Contrast this to killersites.com, where a relatively small number of people bookmark it … we get too many people looking for too many different things … the content is too divergent.
MAKING KILLERSITES.COM STICKIER
It’s not going to be easy, but I am now cleaning things up, moving things to micro-sites, simplifying the pages – sometimes spring-cleaning comes in late summer!
