The following techniques may be employed to increase your Web site traffic:
- Create a What's New or New Products page. Site visitors like to see what is new, trendy, or just released. Make it easy for them.
- Establish a promotion program. The sky is the limit for promotions. You can offer free products, trial samples, or discount coupons. Everyone loves a bargain, so give it to them!
- Establish a contest. It costs nothing to create, is simple to manage, and draws visitors back.
- Add content-relevant professional articles, news events, press releases, or other topics of interest on a daily basis to draw back visitors to your site.
- Establish a viral marketing campaign or embed viral marketing techniques into your current advertising programs or e-zines. Viral marketing is when you incorporate such things as a "forward to a friend" link within the advertisement. In theory, if many people forward to many more friends, it will spread like a virus (hence the name viral) and eventually go to many potential customers.
- Use signature files with all e-mail accounts. Signature files are basically business cards through e-mail, so why not send your business card to all your e-mail recipients? Signature files are sent with every e-mail you send out and can contain all contact information, including your business name and Web site URL. Signature files can be created in Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express.
- Start an affiliate program and market it! Include your affiliate information in e-mails, newsletters, e-zines, and on Web sites to promote your program. A successful affiliate program will generate a significant increase in Web site traffic.
- Include your Web site URL on everything (business cards, letterhead, promotional items, e-mails, etc.).
- Add a free search feature to your Web site. This is a great tool, which site visitors will love! There are dozens of free search services you can incorporate into your Web site. Just do a search on "free Web site search," and you will have plenty from which to choose.
- Register multiple domain names with search engines and "point" them to your main Web site. Owning similar or content-related domain names is a good investment to protect yourself from competitors stealing similar-sounding domain names and will help you with search engine rankings.
Of course, the best way to improve your website is hiring a professional web developer, so it is highly recommended to consider this option in order to save time and money.