Hi,
I just wanted to tell you guys about a new site I came across. It is a penny auction. Check the site out www.midpenny.com.
They show great examples of how to attract new customers, how to keep the site fresh and clean, and how to market their site.
They attract new customers with fresh content on their site, and new looks to the site on a weekly basis. Sometimes a little longer but hey they change and keep it fresh.
They know who to target and they are obviously doing something right with thousands of users on their site.
I haven't posted in a while so I wanted to give a small lesson on how to keep people coming back to your site. I am using www.midpenny.com as my example because I use that site to buy cool stuff.
Part 1.
FRESH CONTENT
Part 2.
LOOK AND FEEL
Part 3.
NAVIGATION
Fresh content is important because you do not want to bore your customers or site members with the same old crap every day! For example. www.midpenny.com uses new auctions and products as their fresh content. I have been a member for over a year now. They were under a different domain last year and surprized everyone with a new site name/company name. That is fresh. They are changing with the growth of the site. Their auctions are completely different from the rest and there is a variety. I don't think I ever see the same item on there more than once in a month. That is a good tactic to stay on top and to kill the market.
The look and feel of a site is very important and it is almost like fresh content. You want to keep the site looking good while giving your members/customers a great place to sit and relax. www.midpenny.com is a great example here because they do not throw in your face all this flash content. They do not over point on a certain area of the site. They just kill it by giving you what you need when you need it. The site looks great and that is a goal. Colors play a big part in this. Your color choice is what in my opinion will make you or break you. A user of your site will return based on the look of your site guaranteed.
Navigation plays a big part also in keeping fresh content and giving your site a good look and feel. Your users want everything they need with just one click away! It is a good idea to have a spot at the bottom of your site with almost all of your links in one place. That or a site map. Site maps really help me with confusing sites. That is ok though because if you have a thousand page website you cannot possible provide a link to every sing page on the home page or members area. That is why a site map is very important. With a site map you get away with a few rules and actually it helps with SEO so your actually helping your users navigate the site and looking good to www.google.com.
Remember one thing. If you like the site it is not ok. Your users must like the site along with www.google.com and other search engines. Think of it as your the user and your coming to the site! Walk away and just come back with a fresh mind. Go to your site and thin "would I return?"
That is all for now. I hope my perspective on things will help you and good luck with your site!
Jon