Taming A Shark And How To Retain Blog Visitors

You are a shark! Like the one on right -->

What does this mean?

This is the question you are asking, right?

Well, I was just quoting Steve Krug. In his book Don't Make Me Think, he has explained the psychology of web users in a single line:

Web users tend to act like sharks: they have to keep moving, or they’ll die.

That is why I was referring to you as a shark.

So dear shark, err, reader, stop on this page for some time and you'll learn how you can tame other sharks. In simple words, how you can retain blog visitors.

Why You Should Retain Blog Visitors

Why should I retain users in first place when I can get more traffic and compensate for it?

That was exactly what I used to think some time back. But this is very wrong.

Blog is like a funnel. A lot of traffic can be put into it but only a limited number of people will convert and subscribe or become regular visitors.

Seth Godin explained it very well in his post The Unforgiving Arithmetic Of The Funnel.

It is best to put your focus on converting most of your traffic rather than focusing on raw numbers.

How To Retain Blog Visitors

That is the million dollar question. How can you retain the people who visit your blog. It is not that hard. Just follow following points:

1. Follow Common Web Design Conventions: Yes, it feels very good to reinvent the wheel but you may go too far in pursuit of "unique blog design". While it is great to have an awesome design, breaking standard conventions can cost you a lot. This will confuse the average web user and send him away. Have some focus on usability as well.
2. Make Your Content Readable: No one likes small fonts. Make body font size at least 12 px. However, 16 px is the new 12 px according to Smashing Magazine. I have started using 16 px font size as standard in all my new projects, I'll soon update Blogging With Success design and then it will be 16 as well.
3. Optimize For Humans: Do not optimize your posts for robots by (over)doing SEO. Optimize for humans. Do HEO, not SEO.
4. Make Your Pages Fast: Nothing sends blog visitors away than a slow loading page. Remember, it is not your visitor's job to know why page is slow. He simply does not care if you are going through an outage or it is a video taking time to load. You have to make your pages ultra fast. Stay with a good host and use a CDN for increased performance.
5. Have Call To Action At Exit Points: Exit Points are very important. Focus on them. Add Call to Action near them so that you can capture blog visitors easily.
6. Have A Content Web: Forget catching or taming sharks. Instead, think like a spider and build a content web. Catch the flies in your web so that they can move here and there but can't go out! Use related posts or write a series to make sure that visitors get complete information on topic and stay.
7. Write Awesome Content: No matter what gurus say, Content is still the king. Without awesome content, design and everything else is nothing. Attract ideas like a magnet, write awesome posts that grab your readers and make them read and see how they stay.

Won't It Take Time?

Yes, it will. But everything takes time.

Rome was not built in a day. You have to invest time to get loyal visitors. That's the deal.

Invest time and see how you get a great community around you.

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Have a good day and enjoy more visitors. Do not forget to subscribe to Blogging With Success to get new posts and exclusive freebies.