Tuesday, 03 April - 09:27 Category: Content, Formulae for Profits

How To Increase Your Website's Community

SYNOPSIS:  Developing brand loyalty for your website is more a matter of developing a community.  Refreshing and developing new content is the key to increasing the retention rate.

Brand loyalty is something which you probably understand really well.  We all have our favourites because of the experiences we have had with that company.  This is why some people only drive BMWs and wouldn't even consider a Mercedes -- brand loyalty.  What if your website (and by association, your company) could attract the same feelings amongst its visitors?  Do you think that would have a healthy impact on your business?  Well, of course, you know it would. 

The problem that many people perceive is that developing a brand like BMW takes billions of dollars over many years.  Now I'm certainly not a billionaire (I have kids) and I'm guessing you probably aren't one either so what can we do to help establish our brand on the Internet without bankrupting ourselves? 

Unfortunately, the answer is marketing and that in itself is a huge field.  However, if we look at the problem from a slightly different angle we can simplify our approach.  Imagine you've got a megaphone and you are standing in the middle of Oxford Street in London.  As you talk you'll see a lot of people looking in your direction but walk on by.  They are analogous to visitors hitting your site and exiting without leaving their contact details or returning again.  Back in Oxford Street, as you carry on talking, you will inevitably attract some people around you who will stop and listen.  (Analogous to those visitors who either return to your web site or leave their contact details.) The number of people passing by divided by those who stop is called your Retention Rate.

The size of the retention rate is predominantly determined by what you are saying (the words on the website) not how you are saying it (the look of the website).  The other factor is that what you're saying is constantly changing and therefore, fresh and interesting.  In producing compelling, varied and refreshed content you will be giving your visitors any reason to return and thereby building a community around your website. 

You will also be doing something that I can almost guarantee your competition won't be doing.  Just take a moment to look at your top 5 competitors and see how much content on their website has changed since you last visited.  Without producing the content and keeping it up to date you aren't giving your visitors are reason to return and you'll quickly find yourself with a website that has more 'passing traffic' than 'community traffic'. 

It is my firm belief that being helpful and giving away good information has a far greater impact on profits than any hard sell tactic ever could.  I also believe that this could not be borne out more faithfully than on the Internet. 

I've written this article just as a taster because there is so much more to discuss than I have alluded to here so watch out for future postings. 

NB You may find that your web statistics software will automatically work out your website's retention rate.  If it doesn't then it should at least tell you the number of returning visitors across a period of time.  The maths is really easy to work out...  To express the retention rate as a percentage simply do this... 

(Number of Returning Visitors / Total Number of Visitors) * 100.  

For example: 

(200 (returning visitors) / 5,000 (all visitors)) * 100 = 4% Retention Rate

Click here to get great content into your website

Discover how interesting statistics really are!

Posted By:Jed Wylie on Mon, Jun 16th 2008, 09:27