By Jennifer Kyrnin

There is an ad on the radio right now that states that "dot com" companies are spending 70% of their marketing dollars on getting new customers. And only 5% on keeping them on the site once they are there. I don't know if this is true, but on the Web, this can be fatal.

You may be spending a lot of time getting your site listed in search engines, marketing your Web product, and getting the visitors to come, but if you're not giving them what they want, they'll leave and possibly not come back.

But how do you keep them on your site?
It's really easy for someone surfing the Web to surf away from your site. That's why you want to make it "sticky". Making a site sticky means that you are giving your readers what they want, and giving them a reason to stay on the site.

There are several techniques you can use to make your site stickier.

• listen to your readers
  Find out what they want, and then give it to them.
• build community
  When your readers feel like they are a part of something, they'll stay longer.
• create content
  Content is the reason that people come to your site, and why they'll stay.

Many sites confuse multiple clicks for stickiness.
Expecting your readers to click and click and click to get the information they are looking for won't happen. But if you create pages that are too long, your readers won't read through the whole thing. If your pages have enough content to fill a full 640x480 window, plus a little more, then you can create a link to a new page.

Next Page > Listen to Your Readers > Page 1, 2, 3, 4

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