Hi fellow Webbers!
There's more than a whiff of crusading zeal about this month's newsletter as we offer up some top tips on sticky marketing, advocate regular DIY data back ups and champion a few noteworthy causes in our tidbits. You can also check out our latest sites of interest.
Finally, we're delighted to announce that our sister company, New Zealand Tourism Online was a victor in this year's hotly contested New Zealand Tourism Awards, winning not one but two prizes.
This month, get stuck in and develop some sticky business!
Tips For Making Your Site Sticky
When talking about Web site stickiness, marketers are referring to a Web site's ability to keep visitors on site, or to its success in encouraging visitors to come back repeatedly. A successful sticky marketing campaign uses a number of techniques designed to get visitors to 'stick' to the site.
Read on for tips that may help make your Web site sticky or even stickier:
- Content
Introduce appealing content to your Web site. It doesn't have to be directly related to the reason visitors originally come to your site, but it may encourage them to come back again. Here are some ideas for content you might like for your Web site:
- Newsletters and articles
- Tutorials and frequently asked questions
- Glossaries
- A calendar of upcoming events
- Daily weather reports and stock quotes
- Location maps
- Thoughts for the day and favourite quotes
- Agony aunt pages
- Feedback mechanisms — forms, blogs, forums
- Free fun (viral) stuff like competitions, postcards, video clips and games
- Bookmarks
Make it easy for a visitor to find the pages that particularly interested them, by adding a bookmark button to the page. Bookmarked pages can be easily stored and then retrieved by visitors from their Web browser (i.e. Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox) as their own favourites or bookmarks.
- Send To A Friend
Add a 'Send to a Friend' button to your Web pages. If people value your content, they may end up encouraging new visitors to come to your site for you.
- Print Page
Make your content accessible in print. It's a very handy function for features such as maps and tutorials.
- Site Search
If your content pages or 'sticky' resources are becoming reasonably extensive, consider adding a site search function, so it becomes easier for site visitors to retrieve information.
- Site Map
Include links to every Web page on your site map — it serves as an index for site visitors and search engines.
- Special Features
Focus on adding special features to your site that sets your Web site apart from your competition's. Have a look at what they are or are not doing.
More Inspiration?
If you want even more inspiration and ideas for developing your sticky marketing, browse around online and start noting down what you particularly like about some of your favourite sites. Remember, the longer your site visitors stay on your site, the longer they are exposed to your company's products or services. Talk to the team at Avatar — we have more sticky Web marketing ideas than you can shake a stick at!
DIY Data Insurance Policy
There are many ways that data can unintentionally be lost from your home or office computers or from a Web server. It could be fire, flood or earthquakes coming into play, but sometimes it's just plain old equipment failure.
By keeping a copy of your files and folders and storing them in a different physical location, you should be able to get most, if not all, of your original information back in the event that something happens to the originals on your computer or your remote server.
What should you back up?
- Anything you cannot easily replace
- Bank records and financial information
- Web pages (especially if you are making changes to your site yourself)
- Digital photographs
- Software and music purchased and downloaded from the Internet
- Email address books
- Browser bookmarks or favourites
- Client database records
It's a good idea to make back ups every week — one day your back ups could save you a lot of time and inconvenience.
Sites of Interest
Here's a selection of sites we've designed, updated and/or promoted recently...
- Lake Matheson Motels (design and promotion)
Motel accommodation in Fox Glacier offering quality and comfortable studio and family units or a holiday house for visitors to New Zealand's West Coast.
- Transition to Work Trust (design and promotion)
Youth development services including mentoring, life coaching and advice for careers and employment for disadvantaged teenagers.
- Insider Touring (design)
Exclusive wine tour packages and
guided tours of top vineyards and wineries around Auckland, New Zealand.
- Babcock Coaching & Training (design)
Wellington based consultancy offers coaching, training, consultancy services and workshops for managers, leaders, teams and individuals.
- Stoneleigh Lodge (promotion)
Luxury bed and breakfast lodge near Christchurch offering a secluded, stylish and private getaway. Stoneleigh Lodge is a French-style chateau and working alpaca farm in Ohoka.
- Horizons Unlimited (promotion)
Christchurch based independent training providers offering training and development courses (including Gap Years) for corporates, schools and individuals in leadership, staff development and safety management.
- Stoffels Online Department Store (promotion)
New Zealand online department store offering top quality brands, gift registry, free gift wrapping and a money back satisfaction guarantee.
- Shining Star (promotion)
Accommodation on the outskirts of Hokitika on the West Coast offering self-catering chalets, cabins and camping grounds.
- Lake Tekapo Scenic Resort (promotion)
Motel resort in Lake Tekapo offering a range of quality, comfortable rooms and apartments with a panoramic view of the mountains and Lake Tekapo.
