Hi, I'm starting to get some hits to my newly developed website. It's a website that lets people manage their book, music and movie collection (www.managethings.com). Most of the visitors that I get just come to the site, and leave after about 10-15 seconds. Obviously I need to trigger them to sign-up, or at least browse around a bit. What are some good techniques to trigger a sign-up, browsing, etc? Thanks!
It sounds simple, but... Redesign. Make it more graphical and make it catch the eye. It looks like a library catalog, and that's not going to get anyone's attention.
well your link actually working would be a good start. Think TLDR, most people want the gist of everything up front and center and if it interests them they will look around, if it doesn't they are gone. Graphics and pictures will add a lot more than words, and words in graphic format works well also.
The main thing is the design of your site and the information contained within it. You need good information that doesn't go overboard. The sorter and straight to the point it is, the better. Also images is useful.
I agree, the design could use a little improvement. But more importantly, the call to action needs to be more clear and visible. Giving away something for free in exchange for your visitor's registration is always a good way to entice visitors to become members of your site. Some refer to it as an ethical bribe IMHO, you need a much better reason why they should join other than what you have on there now. Maybe, if you put a big link that says CLICK HERE TO REGISTER FREE TODAY and put that link in plane view of the visitor, you'll be sure to get signups. Also, if you can, maybe put the registration form right on the homepage just for now until it gets viral enough that people are going to join because their friends told them to. Hope this helps, Jason
A good technique and probably the most obvious one to increase your conversion ratio would be spending some time and working on the quality of the traffic that you're driving to your website. Failing that, work on how your content is displayed. Try to draw your users in, don't push sign up forms in their face.
Thanks all. I understand the concern about the layout. I built it pure for functionality, not for appeal - I guess it makes sense that it doesn't really invite at this time... j0n: I am new to the 'driving traffic to website' portion of things, so would you be able to explain how exactly I can increase the quality of traffic?
With many sites you can get traffic, but it doesn't matter how much traffic you get, the main thing is that you want to make the traffic return, so the content and the design of your site is important.
That makes sense, john269. One other comment I had a question about is the design. "It looks like a library catalog and that is not going to attract a lot of people". Problem is, it is a library catalog. How would you suggest tackling the issue of redesigning while keeping functionality? Is it just changing graphics / making it more appealing, or actually removing certain content from the front page as well? Is it only the frontpage that needs major work or would you recommend improvements all throughout?
OK. I'm still on the look for a better design. Can anyone perhaps post link to some community-type sites with an attractive layout so I can get some ideas on how to improve my own layout?
I don't know if they're exactly the type of sites you want, but you should check out the design gallery sites to see some nice looking ones. http://www.webcreme.com/ http://www.mostinspired.com Our site www.menuism.com got posted to some of these sites recently and it drove a nice amount of traffic.