How many times have you found yourself looking at your website statistics and noticed that 90%+ of your visitors were brand new? You may have looked at that statistic and found yourself getting excited that so many new people were finding you each month.

 

Unfortunately, those stats aren’t a good thing. These high numbers tell you that visitors are arriving to your site, clicking into it a bit and not finding anything helpful enough to make them want to return. This is a common problem, but doesn’t have to be.

Think about the sites you frequent the most. Let’s take a look at the top ten websites on a global level and see what all these sites have in common. Below is a list of the sites based on the amount of traffic they receive.

  1. Google
  2. Yahoo
  3. YouTube
  4. Live
  5. Facebook
  6. MSN
  7. Wikipedia
  8. Blogger
  9. MySpace
  10. Yahoo.co.jp (Yahoo Japan)

What do they all have in common? Each of these sites engage their visitors. They may provide the ability for visitors to search for an answer to an elusive question, allow them to socialize with people they graduated with over 20 years ago and have completely lost touch, or give them the ability to learn how to tie a tie on a video that someone from halfway around the world posted.

You may be thinking that those tactics may not work for your site. Think about it this way: the people visiting your site are doing so because they have an interest in the products, services or cause you are promoting online. With Web 2.0, there are several options to easily create pieces of functionality, allowing you to make a connection with your visitors and provide them the ability to tell you what is important to them.

You could add a blog to your site to keep your visitors up-to-date on new developments within your industry or examples of how your product was used in unique ways to help another company experience significant growth. You could add a discussion forum so your visitors get questions answered or review the answer to another question asked. You could have “how-to” videos on your website that help your visitor figure out how to accomplish that task that’s been driving them crazy for the last month.

The bottom line is if you put yourself in the shoes of your potential visitor, and create mechanisms on your site that engage your visitors once they arrive, you will give them a reason to return again and again. If you take time to do this you’ll see that New Visitor percentage drop, and your Actual Visitor number will begin to rise because you’ll be adding return clients every month. I promise if you add these mechanisms and focus on providing compelling information you can double traffic in no time.

I’d love to hear stories of how you added this type of functionality to your site and the results you found. Leave a comment, or visit our page and post your question. We’ll answer it as soon as possible. Every day you are not taking action, you are losing potential return visitors and not maximizing your online revenue potential. Do something now!