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If you’ve been running a website for some time you’ll understand the vital importance of driving repeat traffic.
If you’re new to running an online biz I have some startling news for you:
“98% of first time visitors will never return to your site.” – HubSpot
Shocked? Yeah I was too when I first heard that stat. What’s the point of marketing your site so hard if you’re only gonna see 2% of people stick around?
Cuz’ if you didn’t, no one would visit you at all.
If you wanna grow your website traffic and in particular your repeat traffic, I urge you to read on.
Repeat traffic is the percentage of users who visit your site more than once. The more someone returns to your site the more familiar they become with your brand and your products.
Therefore our goal as website owners is to keep users coming back.
Today I’m gonna give you 5 easy tips for increasing your user engagement and getting first time visitors back to your site over and over again.
1. Capture emails using apps like SumoMe
Ever been on websites and seen those annoying pop-ups asking for your email? You know the ones.
Those annoying pop-ups are popular for a reason. They work. I run the free SumoMe ‘List Builder’ on FlyerHeroes and receive an 8.5% conversion rate. That works out around 200 new email subscribers per day.
Why are emails important? Once you have someone’s email address you can contact them on a weekly basis with links to new posts and products on your site.
Below are 3 tools which can help you capture more emails:
- SumoMe (free)
- OptinMonster ($49)
- PopupDomination ($47)
2. Use an Autoresponder Sequence
OK, you’ve got someone’s email address – now what? Email newsletter services such as MailChimp have these fancy things called “Autoresponders”.
An ‘autoresponder’ is a sequence of pre-made email newsletters that are automatically sent to new email subscribers after joining your newsletter.
For example, immediately after someone joins your newsletter your autoresponder could send them a “welcome email”, followed by a list of your most popular posts the next day.
Simply put, an autoresponder automatically sends emails to subscribers with the intention of bringing them back to your website. #RepeatTraffic
The very best thing about an autoresponder is that you set it and forget it. Once you’ve built your sequence of automatic emails they’ll send out in the background to every new subscriber automatically.
Below are a selection of popular email services you could use for your email newsletter:
3. Use Social Media Software to Schedule Updates
Automation is a beautiful thing.
After an email autoresponder sequence my second favourite way of driving repeat traffic is through social media.
Apps like Buffer and SproutSocial enable you to schedule days, weeks or even months worth of daily content for your Facebook and Twitter pages.
This means you can spend an hour scheduling content and then leave your social profiles on autopilot for weeks at a time.
The apps and services below can help you optimise your social media profiles and continuously drive free repeat traffic:
- Buffer App
- Sprout Social
- Circular (Free!)
- HootSuite
- BeatrixApp
- Sean Social (Premium social media management service)
4. Automatically Re-Share Website Content
This mini-tip to goes hand-in-hand with the tip #3.
There are free services online such as IFTTT and a bunch of plugins for WordPress websites which automatically share new posts and products across your social media platforms.
You can also utilise these services to re-share older website content, giving you a constant flow of updates for your social media channels (and links which keep driving traffic back!)
Check out the services below:
5. Create a Posting Schedule to Familiarise Readers
A “posting schedule” is a set of regular posts that users expect to see on a website at the same time each day / week / month.
An example of a posting schedule would be:
- Despreneur’s Inspiring Sites of the Week
- Abduzeedo’s Daily Inspiration
- FlyerHeroes’ Free Flyer Friday
- RouteOne’s One Hit Wednesday
- Your local news website’s “week in review”
Pro tip: In the early days of my site offering a new freebie each and every Friday was the single most effect method of growing the FlyerHeroes brand.
Readers and site visitors grow to expect your content and begin habitually visiting your website of their own accord.
Posting schedules are so effective that when implemented correctly you’ll receive comments and complaints when you forget to post!
Bonus. Disqus comments
OK, this is a bonus tip because I don’t have solid-data or experience to back it up. Though, it does drive a little bit of traffic to my sites.
Disqus comments is a free comment plugin, popular because of its ease of use.
Just like standard comment forms, Disqus offers comment notifications. These comment notifications alert commenters to new comments on blog posts and also if someone has replied to them.
This brings them back to your site.
However Disqus also has a neat “Comment Digest” feature which sends all commenters a frequent email of popular conversations on your site. This single feature alone drove over 100 visits to my very small website DesignerCandies last month. For a small website with not many visitors, those 100 visitors make Disqus a significant traffic source.
What tips can you share?
If you have any tips that help you drive repeat traffic to your website or blog, please share them in the comments! We’d love to hear them!
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