Sex and stickiness (page 2 of 2)

Whenever they visit your site, they will see fresh headlines from around the world that relate to their interest/your industry. Even if the site visitor is aware that these are from third party sources, they still give your site a fresh feel, and it is useful for the visitor to see the headlines in one place. AME Info's Media Centre works like this.

You can also get third-party photo feeds that regularly update with new images. Blogging software can also be embedded into your site to make it easy for you to post regular updates. If you find relevant websites or articles, keep a regularly updated links list - this can also be done with a third party add on such as Blogrolling.com.

Be unique

Thirdly, uniqueness: put something on your site that no one else has. Or something else that no one has done well. This could be a FAQ or information pages related to your industry or specialisation. It might be tutorials or guides for relevant software.

It may even be a set of free desktop pictures - this is particularly relevant for those with travel and tourism websites, or auto-related sites. Or it could be a free application you have built, or a free cut-down version of the software that your company sells. Etailers can hand out discount vouchers and special offers to regular customers.

When people get something worthwhile for free it builds loyalty. They will be more likely to bookmark you, to return, to hunt around your site further and recommend it to their friends. And when you have something unique, you are more likely to rise up the Google hit rankings.

The risk of unstickiness

Above all, don't forget design. People don't stay around on sites that are poorly designed, whether in terms of visual attractiveness or poor usability. They want to feel welcomed and uplifted by a site, and they don't want it to frustrate them.

If they don't have a good experience, they won't come back regardless of how many sticky features you have put on there. The sheer simplicity of Google's search page compared to other search sites is believed to be a big part of its success: it looks clean and it loads instantly and is the easiest thing in the world to use.

Music, animated and heavy-to-load graphics, flash intros - all these are major turn-offs and the antithesis of sticky content. If you want to put music or video on, do it in a way that requires a user click to activate. Many people browse in the office and most people's instant reaction to a noisy website is to close the page rather than turn the volume down. Design expert Vincent Flanders of WebPagesThatSuck identifies "148 Mortal Sins That Will Send Your Site to Web Design Hell".

Flanders calls sticky content "heroin content". It's content that people will crawl through a sewer to get access too. It's the make or break for your website and possibly your business, if you are based online. And it is possible to get sticky without having sex.