How to Entice Your Visitors to Revisit Your Website

Marni Weinberg - March 1, 2011

Lets play make believe for a moment, shall we? Claudia did a search on Google for a personalized baby gift. You are an online baby gift retailer running a Pay per Click Campaign through AdWords.  Claudia clicked on an ad (yours) found something she liked and completed her transaction successfully. That’s great, right? Wait, it gets better. She also happens to be invited to multiple baby showers in the immediate future and will be in the market for several more baby gifts. What measures can you take to get Claudia to revisit your site (instead of your competitor) and make future purchases?

There are a variety of ways a retailer can entice a first time customer to become a repeat customer.  This blog post will focus on 5 tips to test and see what kind of results you get. It is important to always remember to allow for a sufficient amount of time (minimum of 30 days) to determine the effectiveness of any new strategy and to employ an analytics tool to track your progress. We use Google Analytics internally, as do many of our clients.

1. Employ a Remarketing Strategy — Remarketing through AdWords gives advertisers the ability to reach a customer who has visited their site and exited without completing the desired action item. For example, if Claudia visited the make baby gift site, but bounced off without making a purchase, the advertiser could then serve up an ad as she browses sites within the Google Content Network. You can either use a generic branding ad or even offer an incentive to get the visitor to complete the transaction. You can also remarket differently to a visitor who did make a purchase, like Claudia. An example would be showing her a 20% off your next purchase banner.
 
2. Fresh Content – The more new, fresh and relevant content you add to your site, the better.  Doing so tells your visitors that there is always something new going on. A few examples include a blog or a newsletter article.  Keeping your site up to date with fresh content will make your visitors want to come back for more.

3. Special Offers – These can be as simple as a monthly/weekly/daily coupon, offer or promotion. The frequency of change can be based on a number of factors such as:  seasonality, inventory, etc. Be sure to keep the coupons current with expiration dates.
 
4. User Friendly Navigation – There are few things more frustrating than a site that is not easy to navigate. You want to make it seamless for visitors to check out your site and get to the page(s) they want to go to.
 
5. Social Media – Make no mistake; people are all about it. You should prominently display links to the channels you are participating in: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. and encourage your site visitors to “like” your Facebook page, follow you on Twitter and connect with you on LinkedIn. Being active on these sites allows you to communicate with your inner (social) circle. You can offer incentives geared specifically to this circle, which will then get them back to your website and maybe refer new business your way.