The end of one year and the beginning of the next is a time for ringing out the changes. Normally this is on a personal level, but why not extend this to your web presence?
For while we as website owners have to concentrate on generating traffic, it’s important not to focus exclusively on attracting new traffic. Just as important – if not more so – is the need to generate repeat traffic.
Research shows that regular visitors to a site spend more and are easier to convert than one-off site visitors. And the one sure thing to bring back the crowds is new content. It’s vital that users are given a reason to return to your site; that the site is “sticky”.
But rather than rely on users taking the initiative to seek out new information, we need to offer the means to ‘push’ the content. The most popular way of doing this today is by means of RSS newsfeeds.
However, for the small to micro-sized company the effort involved in sustaining such a regular flow of news can be intimidating. And for users not as web-savvy as your average teenager, an RSS newsfeed button my mean little or nothing to them, or be of little interest even if they do.
A simple quick and easy alternative that’s undervalued today is the site change indicator which enables users to subscribe to a page or web site and be notified when any changes have occurred, for instance, on a regularly updated page offering discounted items or special offers.
One way of introducing a page monitoring system for users is a free tool from whatuseek called changeAlarm. A simple piece of code placed on the page to be monitored displays to users a sign-up box that notifies them by email when the page is updated.
The back end stuff is handled by changeAlarm, all that’s required to start using it is to register and create an account. Logging in thereafter enables webmasters to view site statistics on how many people have signed-up to be notified, as well as the volume of change notification emails sent out.
It is also possible to customise your site’s sign up page with text, a company logo and a link back to the home page.
