Viperfish is the personal site of Joomla!™ Developer, John Pitchers. As co-owner of JoomStore.com.au, John specialises in development of Joomla based websites, custom extensions and provides consultation on Joomla implementation.

Building Communities and Networks.

Give your visitors a reason to leave their email addresses

If you achieve what you want to achieve on a visitors first viewing, that's great! Note that most people, however, do not purchase products or completely explore a site in a single visit, especially their first. Most visitors delay decisions for one reason or another, and are likely to look around, especially if they were referred to your site by a search engine. The good news is most people limit their 'shopping around' to just a few sites. The time spent by a visitor to find a bargain is significant, and usually short. Reasonable collect visitors' contact details (typically email), and obtain permission to send them emails.

If your pricing, features and appeal are the same as your competitors, why will a visitor return to your site rather than any other site? What can you do to increase your chance against your competitors (or fellows bearing similar content). Define what's in it for your visitors. Give those who submit their email access to special content. Are you selling something? Can you be an expert in an area that your visitor (on a personal basis) will find valuable? Once you have returning visitors, a 'nice' thing you can do is create an unbiased guide (like the one I'm writing now) that relates to what you're trying to achieve and what your traffic wants.

These are lengthy activities. Some less time-demanding tactics may be something as easy as offering to send special discounts, or special content (as mentioned above), or a newsletter which has tips and something special (even new content before it's released). Whatever your plans, give your visitors a reason to leave their email address with you. Doing this gives you a chance to contact your audience via email, costing you practically nothing. Even if the visitors have left your site long ago, you still have direct contact to them via email, and I bet your competitors are sitting around waiting for the visitors to come back.