This may seem like a no-brainer, but you want to be able to keep people on your website. I’ve talked about this in the past, a few times, but this time I intend to give you a few more pointers for getting and keeping people coming back for more. Make it easy for them.

So, here we go, here’s a checklist (kind of) of things to take into consideration for your website:

  • What is different about the content of your site? If you have something to offer your customers that other people do not, then that is likely what you’ll focus on. Why would someone come to you if you offer the exact same thing as everyone else? Why is it better if someone goes through you? Try creating a featured section so people are drawn to what you have to offer.
  • Is it easy to find everything on your site? There should be a search box somewhere, and everything should be easy to locate. If you have too many links and constantly move them around your site, not staying consistent throughout, you’re going to lose people. Customers are going to get frustrated with the navigation and leave. Keep navigation in the same location(s) on every page, and label them clearly.
  • Is your site aesthetically pleasing? This is more of a design question. If your site is hideous, it may not get as many returning customers. If your content is good, people will come back, but let’s face it, people like pretty shiny things. Polish up the site. Take extra junk out that doesn’t need to be there, and make sure your colors work well together. Do you like the way your site looks? If you were your own customer, would you go back to it?
  • Does it take a long time for your site to load? By long time, I mean more than a minute or two. People expect things to happen fast, even if they’re on dial-up. People on dial-up (yes, they still exist) will have more patience for websites, but if you are on a high speed connection, there is no excuse for your website taking its sweet time. Make sure your file sizes are smaller so they don’t take too long to load. Also, if you have a Wordpress page, make sure you don’t have too many plug-ins. Plug-ins will slow your site down because they will load first, and if there’s anything preventing them from loading quickly, it slows the rest of your content down. Again, people will get frustrated and leave if your site simply takes too long.
  • Of course your SEO is of utmost importance when it comes to bringing people into your site that don’t know about it. This includes your social networking sites for your website. If you have clean, refined SEO, search engines will be able to crawl your site easily. The networking sites help to create backlinks, and connections with other people to encourage traffic through your website. RSS feeds are a good way to get more people clicking.

When you’re browsing through someone else’s website, take special note of all of these things. Check out the design, navigation, content, load time, and even peak at their style sheet to see what they’ve done with their SEO. What works well for the site? What does not? What needs improvement? Would you/are you going to visit again? When you asses someone else’s website, it’s easier to be critical. If you’re having difficulty deciding whether your website is running efficiently, have a friend look at it and be completely honest with you. If they get confused, chances are the rest of the people are as well.

Good luck to you!