Web Site Elements That Keep ’Em Coming Back 41

42 101 Ways To Promote Your Web Site
attract potential customers from your target market, then give away
something that relates to your products and industry.
You can simply request that people fill out an electronic ballot to
enter the contest. If you want to find out something about the people
entering, ask them to answer an appropriate question or two. If you
want to do some market research, again, ask a question or two. Make
it easy and unobtrusive. The more fields they have to fill out the
fewer people will enter your contest. Be selective with the questions
you ask.
If the prize is one of your products, consider asking entrants to write
a short note outlining why they would like to have the product you are
giving away. You can award the winner(s) with the product and follow
up with the other entrants. These people might be in a position to buy
your products, and you will have gained some valuable knowledge from
the notes submitted.
If your product is appropriate for a prize that would be of interest
to many different types of people, consider finding contest sites that are
willing to offer your product as the prize on their site. This can generate
brand awareness for your product. You can have the site show a picture
of your product with a link to your site. The contest site should be more
than happy to do this because you are offering to give something for
free that adds value to that site.
You can turn a contest into a competition. If your Web site relates
to cooking or baking, ask entrants to submit their best recipe using
your food product. People will visit your site to see the winning recipes,
and you might get some ideas for future marketing efforts. Other
competitions might include things such as best photo with product X,
best short story about product X, best drawing of product X, and so
on. This creates better brand awareness and reinforces sales of your
product. The closer the contest relates to your product, the better.
Instead of offering just one prize, offer a number of smaller prizes as
well. This makes the odds look better and people feel they have a
better chance of winning.
You might have contestants answer three questions relating to your
product or service on the entry form. Of course, to find the answers to
the questions, the visitor has to visit a number of pages on your site, and
the three questions are marketing related.
You can have the contest one where you get information about your
target market. When contestants enter the contest, have them rank what
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Web Site Elements That Keep ’Em Coming Back 43
influences their buying decision. The information you request can also
provide you with demographic or psychographic information.
Allow site visitors one contest entry per day—you’re happy to have
visitors return to your site often. You might consider changing the information
on the contest Web page around the entry form on a regular
basis. Provide links to other repeat-traffic generators such as your coupons
or your e-specials.
Whatever type of contest you determine best meets your marketing
objectives, be sure you encourage permission marketing (“Click here to
be notified when we have a new contest”) and viral marketing (“Tell a
friend about this great contest”). Leverage, leverage, leverage: “Tell five
friends and receive an extra ballot for yourself.”
Make your contest conditional: “Sign up to receive our weekly
e-specials and be included in our drawing for (something of interest to
your target market).”
Before you go ahead with holding any kind of contest, find out if any
legal issues concern you. There may be restrictions that you are not aware
of (e.g., you might be required to purchase a legal permit to hold lotteries).
You should also remember to ask the entrants the e-mail address at
which they want to be notified of the winner. This, again, grants you
permission to e-mail them to tell them who the winner was, and also to
inform them of the specials that you might have at your site that month.
You want to promote your contest through public and private mail
list postings, newsgroup postings, your e-mail signature file, press releases,
and links from contest sites. Some popular contest sites you might
want to be listed from include:
• Contest Guide (http://www.contestguide.com)
• Contest Hound (http://www.contesthound.com)
• About Contests (http://contests.about.com)
• Red Hot Sweeps Sites (http://www.redhotsweeps.com)
• Contests and Sweepstakes Directory (http://www.sweepstakescontests.
com)
• Winning Ways Online Sweeps (http://www.onlinesweeps.com).
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44 101 Ways To Promote Your Web Site
Using Employment Opportunities to Increase Visitors
People involved in a job search or interested in new job opportunities
will revisit your site occasionally to see your list of available positions.
See Figure 3.8 for a sample employment page.
Creating Useful Links from Your Site
Provide visitors with links to other sites similar to yours or a metaindex
of links that would be of interest to your target market (see Figure
3.9). Do not put outbound links on your home page. Place them down
a level or two after the visitors have seen all the information you want
them to see before you provide the links away from your site. Links can
be incorporated in two ways. The first is where clicking the link loads
the new page in the same browser window. (It replaces the content of
your page with the content of the linked page.) The second and preferred
method is to have the link open a new browser window. (Your
page stays where it is and the content from the linked page opens up in
the new browser window.) This is preferred because once visitors are
Figure 3.8. Google provides information on employment opportunities from
its Web site.
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Web Site Elements That Keep ’Em Coming Back 45
finished with the new page, they can close the new browser window
and your page is still there in the “old” browser window. Try exchanging
links with others so you receive a link from their site to your site. As
long as the links are of value to your visitors, people will come back to
see if you have found any new and interesting sites for them to visit.
You might consider asking visitors if they are interested in being
notified when you update your list of links or just make updates to your
site in general. By offering this, if they choose to do so, you have the
opportunity to send people an e-mail message and remind them about
your site while presenting them with new information about what might
be going on with your site.
Investing in Online Chat Sessions
Chat rooms are very popular and, to some, even addictive. If you have
a chat forum on your site, make sure that the topic relates to your business
and that participants are likely to be your target market. To encourage
repeat visitors, you could change the topic from day to day or
week to week. You could also have celebrity appearances in your chat
Figure 3.9. The Travel Industry Association of America provides useful links
for travel industry professionals from its site.
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46 101 Ways To Promote Your Web Site
sessions. These sessions should be regularly scheduled, and the upcoming
events should be posted on your site so that your visitors will know
what is going on when, and will not miss the session if it is of importance
to them. They could be on Sunday from 3 to 5 p.m., or on Tuesday
from 7 to 9 p.m. Also remember to have the information in your
signature file and do some postings through your appropriate mail lists
and newsgroups to promote the event.
You should try to post the topics of the discussions at least a week
in advance so that your visitors will remember to come for the entire
session if they are interested in the topic. You would be surprised how
many people schedule time so that they can chat with someone special
or knowledgeable in an area that interests them. You might also think
of asking your visitors if they would be interested in being notified of
upcoming chat sessions or celebrities who might be visiting your site to
chat. This again gives you the opportunity to e-mail people, at their
request, and present them with information that can entice them to visit
your site again. You can also ask your community whom they’d like to
see as a guest or what topics they would like to have discussed.
Providing a Tip of the Day to Encourage Repeat Visits
Have a section that offers cool tips that relate to your business, your
products or services, or your target market, as in Figure 3.10. These tips
can be from one sentence to one paragraph long. If visitors find your
advice helpful, they will return repeatedly to see what interesting piece
of information you have displayed that day. Ask your visitors if they
would be interested in receiving the tip via e-mail or if they would like
to be notified when the tip has been updated so they can then visit your
Web site. Encourage people to send the tip to a friend. You can also
encourage others to use your tip on their Web site as long as they provide
a link back to your site as the source.
Ensuring Your Site Gets Bookmarked
Encourage visitors to add you to their bookmark list. At appropriate
parts of your site, display the call to action “Bookmark me now!”
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Web Site Elements That Keep ’Em Coming Back 47
Figure 3.10. Tips of the day can encourage repeat visitors.
(see Figure 3.11). A call to action is often effective. Make sure the
title of the page that has the “Bookmark me now!” clearly identifies
your site and its contents in an enticing way, because the title is what
appears in the bookmark file as a description. Whenever I see “Bookmark
this site now!” I always consider it. Sometimes I do and sometimes
I don’t, but I always consider it. Often, when the call to action
is not presented, I don’t think about it and don’t bookmark it. Then,
days later when I want to go back there, I wish I had remembered to
bookmark it.
World Interaction with Bulletin Boards
It can be very satisfying to see people join in from all over the world just
to interact with each other on a topic that relates to your Web site, as
shown in Figure 3.12. Beware, you will have to keep an eye on the
messages and may even have to play referee occasionally.
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48 101 Ways To Promote Your Web Site
Figure 3.11. When you see a “Bookmark this site now!” or “Bookmark Us!”
call to action, nine times out of ten you will at least consider it.
Figure 3.12. The Speaker Café is a great bulletin board where people can
request info about professional speakers for conferences and trade shows.
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Web Site Elements That Keep ’Em Coming Back 49
Inviting Visitors to Contribute with Surveys
Performing surveys is a way to increase the traffic to your site. For
people to want to fill out the survey and see the results, the survey
topic must be interesting. To encourage input, consider having the
survey results available to participants only. Your survey could be on
a topic concerning current events or something pertaining to your industry.
The more controversial or debatable the topic of the survey,
the more people will visit to contribute or see the results. If you want
to draw a very targeted audience, pick a topic that is of interest to that
market alone.
In performing these surveys, you are building repeat traffic and you
are gathering valuable information on your market. If you hold an interesting
survey every week or every month, then you will retain a loyal
audience of repeat visitors. If your surveys are newsworthy, then you
can send out press releases to publicize the results and gain publicity for
your site.
Your surveys should be short and to the point. Let people know
why you are asking them to do the survey and when the deadline is.
Make your questions clear and concise. The responses should be Yes/No
or multiple choice. When reporting the results, don’t just put them on
your Web page; post the results to newsgroups and mailing lists that
would be interested. Don’t forget to add your signature file. If you are
holding weekly or monthly surveys, let people know via your signature
file what the next survey topic will be and that there is more information
on your Web site.
Again, ask people if they’d like to be notified of survey results, either
by e-mail or by prior notification as to when the results will be posted
on the site. You might also ask if they’d like to be notified when you are
conducting a new survey.
Encourage Repeat Visits with Your Site of the Day
Having your own Site of the Day (see Figure 3.13) or Site of the Week
(see Figure 3.14) listing means a great deal of work, searching the
Internet for a cool site to add or looking through all the submissions.
However, if your picks are interesting to your audience, you might
find that avid Internet users come back every day to see what great
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50 101 Ways To Promote Your Web Site
Figure 3.13. The Political Site of the Day focuses on a variety of politically
related Web sites and offers an e-mail notification service to inform its visitors of
the new Site of the Day.
Figure 3.14. Cool Lego Site of the Week showcases Lego fans around the
world and their works of art.