Giving Your Website Stickiness

What is a sticky website?
Essentially, a sticky website is one that keeps visitors within the pages. A mix between good content and a pleasant design is the backbone to building a sticky website. The peripherals are the copy writing and the navigation. 

If the copy is simple and interesting the viewer will want to read more. A great example of this is the "cliff hanger" effect. This is where the final paragraph of an interesting article is on another page. The subsequent page finishes the article and delivers options for more reading or may even include an order form on it. This is a very tricky style to implement correctly, but if done well, it is one of the most successful methods of keeping a visitor on the website until the close of the sale.

A mistake often made is the creation of orphan pages. To explain briefly, A parent page is a top level page with one or more pages following it in a logical sequence. A child page is the page the parent leads to. An Orphan page is neither a child nor a parent, it stands alone. There maybe a link to it somewhere on the website, but once there, there is no where to go, other than hit the back button on your browser or close it and go somewhere else.  

Good navigation means a series of links would be available on a page pointing to relevant areas. Just think about it for a minute. You have read 3 pages about  your favourite chocolate bar, and you followed a link to a page about the history of it. The history page was the last page on the subject. A child page. An error would be to assume the viewer had enough information and provide no more links. The viewer would then either click "back" on his browser to visit a page he has already read, or close the browser and go to your competitors site. This would be an Orphan page and. 

Ideally, That orphan page, should lead the reader onto another relevant area. So we have just finished reading about the history of our favourite chocolate bar, what next?

The idea here is to give the viewer some options. He may want to buy some chocolate now, he may want to read history on other chocolate bars, he may be researching for a project. He may be there for any amount of reasons. Whatever his reasons are, a series of links for him to follow to things like "Order your chocolate online and receive a 10% discount", "The history of chocolate making in the 19th century" or "want to learn more? contact us here and get the help of the professionals" will offer some very good reasons for your viewer to stay in your website.

What is the point of a sticky website?
The longer a person stays within the pages of your website, the more familiar he becomes with it. The more familiar, the more comfortable. It is when the visitor feels comfortable that they will make the purchase. Even if your product is slightly more expensive than your competitors, if the visitor feels comfortable with, therefore trusts, "you" then you are far more likely to win the sale. All because of your website's stickiness.

Next, How to create an ideal Home Page