Sticky Websites

[DrayScherm]

A woman has come to me with the complaint that her website is not "sticky" - 70% of the visits last 30 seconds or less, with few repeat visits.

From everything I've read "stickiness" is a result of the content, not the design per se.

My question: Are there characteristics of the design itself that help make a website more sticky? What design guidelines should be followed or specific design elements should be used?

I'm looking for something beyond the basics of easy-to-navigate, nix the garish animations, etc. For example, "Use an attractive smiling man/woman in the banner".

Any thoughts on this subject?

Thanks....Duane

[Tech Manager]

Work on a combination of easy access (speed of the site loading), intuitive navigation...and relevant/dynamic content with the appropriate embedded links to lead deeper into the site. People need a reason to stay longer. WIthout seeing the site in question it is hard to provide more than a few generalizations.

As for design, make sure your design does not impede traffic in any way. Design the site with highly visible hooks (content to draw them in) and themes to draw them back. People often view a website in the same way they scan a newspaper. It's quick...unless something catches their eye quickly and prominently.

One of the things I would check is how your client knows the average stay is 30 seconds or less. While her stats program may be providing that information it is not always accurate or relevant. Does it include search engines?

[DaveSawers]

Visitors won't stay long if the site is not what they're looking for. Check out what search phrases were used to find it and if they're not particularly relevant, change the content.

[Tubby]

I think basically. the site needs to say to the user. . yes this is the site I was looking for. If you can place something that give the user that impression, then you have best part solved the problem.

A user might have looked at a few sites before they arrive, shopping on the net is not as quick and easy as people hope for. it can be time consuming clicking through pages.

A sticky page will stop them in their tracks. Creating the right page for your market may not be as easy as listening to advise. It might involve thumbing through a hundred hundred newspaper ads, and then writing down the ones you can recall. or the steady adverts that work, and noting what ads do not appear again - ever. If an advertiser finds an ad that works. It can often be found popping up in lots of publications. . Little tricks like this you will need to work out for yourself . experiment.

I experiment all the time. currently I am working with this page.
classic car parts - I do not expect it will impress you. . But for a web user looking for car parts. . It seems to work. . The underlying message is yes we have parts coming out of our ears.
The page presents them with the option of simply listing what they need. . and letting the site do the work.
From here user click to a navigation page. . to find the right category.

But, your customer will not be impressed with the design of a page like this. You will need to compromise on just about everything. to keep the aesthetic acceptable - and sticky. and sell the product. then try to work out how to get Google to like it. It is also a catch them page, for the visitor that has spent two hours looking for a part -

But you may need several doorways to get an effective 'Stickiness'

I do not think there is any easy answer, or a standard across the board answer. I think the right design for your user probably will involve the content they are looking for. Your customer should understand what their buyers want. . If not you might be looking at a lot of research. . You could still end up with a very nice site. . that your peers like, and your customer is left selling nothing.

[DrayScherm]

Thanks for your comments. Much appreciated. More info...

The website provides supplies for jewelry designers - beads, wire, etc. The stats package is AWStats and the < 30 seconds/visit stats are included there. I believe it includes search engine hits.

The search terms leading people to the website appear to be the ones she is targeting. One problem is that not enough people are finding the website. It has been up for over 4 years but has very few inbound links, and almost no non-product content that would draw people there and make them stay.

From my perspective, content and building community are the issues, and design per se can help but only a bit and not without a lot of work on the content.

I had a look at the car parts site. Maybe this succeeds because car guys are used to scanning classifieds, and this makes them feel right at home. In that sense this website's design achieves a couple of sticky factors - making the visitor feel comfortable and matching their mental template for the info. It wouldn't work for jewelry materials, but your point is well taken.

Thanks again for the insights....Duane

[Tubby]

drayscherm said
"matching their mental template"

That is a nice term, I will use that somewhere.

Duane, You seem to have a good grasp of the problem, this is always the precursor to a solution.

Have you looked into trade magazines. small Jewellery manufacturers, makers designers will almost certainly have a trade mag, an association newsletter, something.

It might be worth looking into getting some article written on jewelry manufacturing - even getting some feedback from somewhere like getafreelancer.com on 10 of fifteen articles - adding a few photos and creating your own inbound links. There are a few freelance writer here, and there is a section to post a request for articles. I have had a few written by WPW members. (these do attract visitors, and point links to my pages)

I have never had anything to do with jewelry. except during my married period. (All I learnt about jewelry was to simply say 'yes'.)

[G[dot]com]

to me is quite difficult really to say something being blind about the design we are talking about, Duane. I am trying to interpret your interpretations about the site and about her interpretations, so this is a bit like a broken telephone... I´d love to see the real thing, if possible.

People don´t have anything else but a visual impact in less than 30 seconds, and the chance to grasp if the site suit their needs. Perhaps the site is reaching people lookign for jewellery... (b2c business -to end comsumers) not jewellery supplies (a b2b business)...

[zbatia]

While AWStats is free, it does not offer clear, easy-to-read statistics that can be usable to enhance the web pages to bring more traffic. Yes, it is valuable for several stats but cannot substitute a good web analytics program with live support. I've been using free counters in a past like AWStats and Counter.com but lately I am offering to my clients to use a very affordable and quite useful subscription for $49.95/month. It's called WebStatsAdvisor, the new product from RTEK2000.com. I love its simplicity and plain-English statistics. I don't want to sound like I am advertising it but I just want to share my experience with the product that I was pleased with. So far, none of my customers stopped the subscription.

Another beauty of the WebStatsAdvisor is that you can also track your off-the-web marketing statistics (like newspapers, boards, direct mail, etc). 10 days trial is offered, so it's not painful to try and compare. Especially useful are automatic e-mails with full reports (weekly/monthly/daily (optional)). I usually compare weekly reports to see the improvements or degradation and can make some adjustments to my strategies.

On another note, the content is always a king. I remember time when we wanted to divide each page on several to make it loading faster. But the time is flying, and now you need the opposite: put everything you need at one page if it’s possible and include many important keywords into your content. The content must be useful to potential buyers even if they are not intended to buy your product right away. Offer them to bookmark the page for an updated and useful content. Offer some freebies and in return ask for their contact info. Add them to your contact list and periodically send newsletters with useful content and other freebies, so they would want to read it. At the same time, add your “buy now” links. I know that statistically you have to “bother” your potential buyer at least 7-8 times until they decide to spend money on your product or service. Keep this in mind.

I feel that you might know all of it, and it takes a lot of time to follow the plan. However, with today’s huge flow of the information the potential buyers would spend time ONLY at valuable pages with useful info or the pages that offer the biggest discount on the Internet. Your customer may have thinner profit but much more buyers. At least this strategy worked for me.

The problem is that those who browse your page don't read EVERYTHING you have written but rather scan the page like a newspaper (as one of the folks mentioned above). Unusual or "sticky" graphic/flash captures attention. It also must lead to action:
1) attract attention; b) generate interest; c) stimulate desire; d) ask for ACTION!

[memaggiem]

I'd have to ask what type of designers are the target - professionals or crafters who are doing it for fun and not necessarily for selling. Images of finished products and links to directions on how to make the products might be useful. List 10 products/projects and then write 10 pages for each project and link all back to each other for example. It might be a small but good start. Feature projects/products of the month, maybe have some contests and give away a few supplies. I've just started with contests on my site and I have found the traffic increased as well as the time people are spending at the site. One thing I did was to have people vote for the best - this has brought in alot of visitors that have come to vote for their friend's item and then they end up staying and bookmarking/subscribing to my site. Just some quick thoughts.

[Orion]

I think you're partially right in that content helps create stickyness.. on your end site features can also create stickiness...

If the website found is on the correct topic they're looking for give them something to do... forums create stickiness, as do blogs, chats, and other items. realestate sites use tools like calculators and listing searches, all sites can incorporate a search bot (google or yahoo site searches will let visitors search the web from your site too). There are many many tools and the like that can entice people to use your website and come back again and again. Trick is to find the right mix for each site/industry/business.

[E-Platform]

The term "sticky" really comes down to relevance and value.

Before becoming alarmed at the abandonment rate she needs to accept that many of the visitors now coming may not be qualified prospects. You have approximately 7-8 seconds after time of entry into a site to hold someones attention so plan accordingly. Here is my advice -

1) Get a handle on the terms/sources generating the click throughs and make certain that you are drawing qualified traffic. Unqualified traffic WILL leave quickly, why would they stay?

2) Make certain that the site has a tag line that easily identifies it's purpose/services/products.
i.e., "Professional Carpet Cleaning for Metro Chicago", not vague claims like "Our Services Are #1"

3) Include relevant content that is important to the user. If I've landed on your home page I've probably already decided what I need so don't sell me on "why", sell me on what you can do to resolve my problem. And get to the point quickly! Make the content easy to SCAN, people don't want to read 15 paragraphs of rambling text.

4) Include call-to-actions and conversion elements.

5) Ask prospects that call you to give you comments on site quality, navigation ease, value of content, what they like/did not like about the site, etc. This is high value information.

You need a top to bottom review of the site. What she is seeing is a common problem when a client employs a "web designer" that does not have a clue about Internet marketing. Effective websites are a LOT more than just some photos and words on an html page. Good luck!

[webmax]

Originally Posted by E-Platform

Effective websites are a LOT more than just some photos and words on an html page.

Excellent comment. If only more clients understood...

[deepsand]

Originally Posted by DrayScherm

A woman has come to me with the complaint that her website is not "sticky" - 70% of the visits last 30 seconds or less, with few repeat visits.

From everything I've read "stickiness" is a result of the content, not the design per se.

But, the appearance of "non-stickiness" can be the result of the coding.

For example, the use of JS links for internal navigation can prevent analytics apps from properly following a visitor from one page to another. Ditto for the absence of the presence of the proper scripts required by the analytics application.

As for measuring repeat visits, there is no reliable method for accurately measuring such, with the result that any metrics reported for such are almost assuredly an understatement of a true measure.

[edhan]

To have visitors staying on a site for more than 30 secs will require uniqueness and quality content. I do have visitors staying on my site for more than an hour looking through page after page as the information is interesting to them. But it is difficult to get repeated visitors as I do know some simply copy my content for offline reading. From here, I can say that you will need to have new unique content that interests them to have them coming back and staying more than 30 secs.

[jawn_tech]

I'd love to look at YouTube's sticky-stats. I'd bet they're as sticky as stats can get.

Mental-Template --- I like that phrase too.

My guess is the traffic to the site in question would definitely need to be qualified traffic, such as if they're searching for apples, the minute they see that the site is about oranges, they're gone. Compound that with the suggestions others have mentioned -- create interesting content on landing pages that takes a moment to digest, is palatable (low prices, innovative in nature, inviting descriptions), and leaves them intrigued enough to dig in further. Those are my suggestions for the ingredients for keeping visitors longer.

[datetopia]

A presentation video could be added, just like on youtube. Interested visitors would stay and watch it.

[DrTandem1]

The short visits are due to accessibility (incompatible with a browser or too long to load) and/or the content. Some designs/layouts are so poor, that people are repulsed, but I'm going to assume that is not the case here. As for design, a person should be able to simply glance at a Home page and have a general idea of what the site has as content/theme.

30 seconds is a fairly long time. Hopefully, that is not spent waiting for the page to load. If they are trying to navigate and don't get the feeling that they are at leasting closing in on what they want, they will leave.

I think we's all like to have a look at the site to give you a better answer.

[DrayScherm]

Once again, I want to thank you all for your observations and suggestions.

I checked load times, and they are long. I should be able to address that in a redesign, which will help. DrTandem, you might be right that the majority of time is actually spent waiting for the page to load.

The owner would like the website to target hobbiasts and amateurs. She would also like to include some video tutorials, in effect implementing some of your suggestions. This would also boost the educational value-added of the website, as well as advertising her jewelry-making workshops.

I haven't looked at trade mags, but I will. Thanks for the suggestion.

Gisela, I wasn't trying to be secretive about the actual website. I omitted a link to it because I really wanted people to think about the design elements only that effect stickiness, not the content issue. Here is the website - THEeBeadStore.com offers quality jewelry making supplies and classses. It is highly impersonal (there is no About page) and offers absolutely no value-added content. But these are issues of content, not design per se.

I will look into other website stats products. Thanks for the rtek2000.com lead. One bothersome thing about AWStats for this website is that there are no stats on specific pages - I guess this is typical for PHP website..??

memaggiem, thanks for the ideas. I think all of these would work well and really add to the value visitors feel they get from the website. I like the contest and voting idea as a way to start building a community feeling among the visitors.

E-platform, I like the steps you laid out and it makes good sense to follow them. I incorporate them in my plan for redesign - many thanks.

Thanks to all for the comments so far, and additional ones if you want to visit the website -- THEeBeadStore.com offers quality jewelry making supplies and classses.

...Duane