Any good online marketing program can get traffic to your site, but once they get to your website, how to you make them want to stay?
In addition to a great site design, friendly user interface, well worded product detail pages, flash demos and product/customer solution selector tools, there are more things you can do to make your website stand out amongst the rest, keep them coming back, and increase their chances of telling friends about your site.
Of course, what additional features you decide to add to your website depend on whether you are focusing on b2b or b2c, and more specifically who your target audiences are.
In this blog I want to focus more on b2c, the consumer.
Now keep in mind that the goal of adding additional features is not to turn your website into an arcade, unless of course, your target audiences are kids and teenagers. The goal I recommend focusing on is adding interactivity into your website.
These activities should:
+ Help customers learn about your product in a fun way
+ Add to the voice of an online community made up of customers and potential customers
+ Encourage return visits to your site
+ Make them want to forward your site to friends
Some of the ideas out there that seem to be effective out on the world wide web are:
Kitchy Games -
My favorite are the kitchy ones that are simple like magic 8 ball, or fortune cookies. You can customize what the responses are.
Give away virtual product virally-
Hire a developer to turn one or several of your products into virual objects that can be used in virtual worlds like SIMs or Second Life. Let these potential cusotmers download these virual products from your website for free.
Imagine if you have a cool product like designer lamps, and a 'Second Life' user, comes to your site to download a virtual version of your products to use in their virual environment as part of their decor. Then they tell all their friends. etc.
Message Boards / Community Blogs / Virtual Chat rooms -
Set up a forum for your customers or potential customers to communicate and bond. Also it is really important to allow at least some level of customization photos, wallpaper, quotes, participation ranking. The more personalization a person can do to their online environment, increases their potential for loyalty to the product and also increase the average number of return visits. Also, it would be good to create a special exclusive forum for a "black belt community" or "inner circle elite group". Like frequent flyer miles allow you to special airline club privilledges, or belonging to any other special club, once you have proved your worth, you get exclusive access to special offers. It is critical to make these people feel extra special, they are your on the street product evangelist, viral cheerleeders and most importantly they are the innovators who reach the early adopters.
You can find examples of these suggested options through out the web. If you have the technical funds or staff you can have any of these ideas customized specifically to your target audiences, however if you are on a limited budget, you can also get generic versions of most of these for free or a low cost.
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