Keeping Your Visitors Once You’ve Got Them 
After you start attracting people to your web site, consider ways to keep them coming back. The key to bringing people back to a web site is to have new and helpful information that they can use to improve their lives.
You can do a number of things to achieve this, from the type of content that you place on your site to sending e-mail to past visitors.
Compelling Content 
The big news organizations enjoy a tremendous amount of repeat traffic to their web sites because people expect updated material daily-and sometimes hourly! Unfortunately, most web managers cannot afford a large staff of writers and artists to provide new material, especially when the focus of the business is selling products.
However, being creative about what you sell is a good way of creating regular content. For example, many sites not only provide product information about what they sell, but also provide information about the more general ways in which people use their products. For example, if you have a site that sells birdhouses, you might want to create an interactive map that tells people what sorts of birds nest in their areas, and then explain which houses (and foods and environments) will attract the birds they want to see. You can then also have articles on standard problems people have with birdhouses-things like food-stealing squirrels and hungry cats. You can update seasonally, reminding customers and potential customers alike about what things look like from a bird’s perspective as the summer ends and fall begins. And perhaps you can throw in a section where your customers relate their favorite bird stories …
As another example, StarCityGames (www.starcitygames.com) sells cards for an obscure card game called “Magic: The Gathering.” How did they make their site into the #1 Magic online retailer? By getting fans of the game to write strategy articles for them, which encouraged Magic fans to check it out daily-and gave even Magic players who had no interest in buying cards a good reason to go there. Eventually,
if they do buy cards, they’ll think of StarCityGames.
Getting creative about what you put on your site can be inexpensive and profitable.
Brainstorm with a few friends, and see what you can come up with!
E-mail Newsletters 
People who want to return to a web site often forget to bookmark it. The best way to remind people to return is with an informative e-mail newsletter that contains short summaries of new articles on your web site and links to those articles.
Newsletters that promote a product web site should contain at least one moderately long summary of an article that is available on the web site and short summaries that contain links to new announcements on the web site. Alternately, newsletters can provide links to news articles found on other sites. By limiting the amount of content that has to be created specifically for the newsletter, you’ll find it easier to maintain a regular publishing schedule.
If you are undecided on a format for your e-mail newsletter, take a look at the newsletters sent out by news organizations such as CNET (www.cnet.com). ZDNet (www.zdnet.com), and CMPnet (www.cmpnet.com). The strong interest in distributing e-mail newsletters has resulted in several companies that provide free or low-cost distribution to lists of people in return for placing advertising within the newsletter. For many purposes, accepting advertising by these newsletter services does not detract from the content, so you may want to investigate placing ads in these newsletters.
Companies that serve a wide range of customers should consider the use of a personalized e-mail product that can tailor the content to match the interests and needs of each subscriber. By adding special codes to a master newsletter template, the software can select which pieces of content to include for each person. For instance, if you sell golf products on your web site, you may have several different groups of customers­like novices, experienced players, and professionals. Even though members of each audience may look at the same product pages in your web catalog, they have different needs and buying motives that you can appeal to with a personalized e-mail newsletter.
To generate subscriptions to your newsletter, include a sign-up page on your web site. Don’t send spam to publicize your newsletter! Make sure to send only appropriate information to visitors who have made inquiries, to avoid the appearance of being a spammer.
Some personalized e-mail products to review include
UnityMail (Revnet) www.unitymail.com
Coravue (GuestTrack) www.coravue.com