25. Run away!
Letting go is never easy, I know – but if you want your visitors to return, it’s essential. Let them come, let them see and let them go gracefully.
Although they say kidnap victims sometimes begin to empathise with their captors, once they’re free they will be the first to testify against you…
Don’t Burn Your Bridges
Possibly the worst offence in this bracket is to block the back button. Sites employ this tactic to trap visitors. If the user clicks back, the page refreshes and they see the same page again. Ordinarily, a user will click back because they want to go to where they were before. Stopping them from doing it will enrage, not engage.
Don’t Pop Up
Likewise, if a user decides to move on to another web site or clicks back, the second worst offence is for one or more pop up screens to attack their vision. For them, something about your site wasn’t right, or they have read all they want and it’s time to head off – there’s no logic in thinking that they’ll be happy to visit a third-party advertiser when they have finished with you.
Don’t I Know You From Somewhere?
Your users won’t be as familiar with the layout of your site as you are. Whenever they click on a link on your site, it’s important to make sure that the link changes colour. Customers need to scent their trail. Likewise it makes commercial sense to show users whereabouts they are on your site, with a simple text location or graphic at the top of the page. Making visitors repeat themselves will only antagonise. Let them travel at will wherever they may roam throughout your site.
Name And Number, Soldier
There are sometimes real business needs for making customers log in to your site.
Certainly it is right to encourage users to log in, with the understanding that you can then tailor the site to make it more specific to their needs or reveal confidential information; but don’t insist on it until and unless it’s absolutely necessary. Let users see as much as possible before making them sign in. This will encourage new users to feel more at home on your site and show your registered users that you take their privacy and trust seriously.
Remember Me?
There are times when you’ll need to remind customers that you still exist and you are ready to serve, whether that be products or information. Mailouts are a very effective way to communicate with all of your registered users (assuming they haven’t opted out) and in essence ‘talk’ to them direct about what’s new and what’s happening at your site. But never forget that you are invading their privacy. You can’t just send a mail to say hello, hoping that seeing your web site name again will inspire users to come back – there needs to be a teaser; some attractive lure to bring them back into your manor. Price promotions are a firm favourite, along with time-specific offers. For information-based sites you can tell your users about updated pages on the site, or new sections they may not have seen before. Try to do your homework, though, and limit the mail to only those who you are confident will be interested.
How did it go?
Q. Our marketing manager really only wants to be mailing our customer base about twice a year max. It’s going to take ages to find out what style works best. Is this the best policy?
A. That is a great policy and will be appreciated by your customers. The trick is to alter your mailout style drastically if you feel it’s not working as well as it should (<2% response rate). Have someone else construct the email, with only the hard facts to work with. Even if you feel it’s not your style, assuming that it’s grammatically correct and is in keeping with your house style (albeit tenuously), go with it and see what happens.
Q. But with only two mailouts per year, it’ll be a long time before we have it perfected. How can we speed up matters?
A. Start splitting your customers into groups. Choose one group of customers to receive mailout 1 and another group to receive mailout 2. This way, although each customer is only receiving two mails per year, you are testing numerous writing styles.
Here is an idea for you…
Once a section of your site has been updated or altered in some way, construct about four differently styled emails to let registered users know about it. Break the mailing list into sections and mail out from four separate addresses ([email protected], [email protected] etc.). The important thing is to alter the link ever so slightly so that you are able to monitor the web page that is attracting the hits (e.g. www.clampcity.com/promo1). It will take a series of these mailouts before any results become apparent, but over the course of four or five mailouts you should be able to see quite clearly which style of email works best, for which sections of your customer base.
Defining idea…
‘Before he sets out, the traveler must possess fixed interests and facilities to be served by travel.’
George Santayana
Defining idea…
‘Remember that happiness is a way of travel – not a destination.’
Roy M. Goodman