Getting people to come back to my website?

[WhiteDove]

I hope that I am posting this in the right section, but on to my question;

How do I get people to come back to my website?
I currently average between 50 - 100 hits a day, but how do I get those people to come back?

I put up software that people download so that's why they visit only about once or twice, but I was wondering
if I could add something to make them come back.

[I'm running Wordpress on my site so any suggestions for plugins are also appreciated.]

 

[wannabie]

Answer this buddy, why do they actually need to come back after they got the software they need?

What makes your site different?

 

[WhiteDove]

Answer this buddy, why do they actually need to come back after they got the software they need?

What makes your site different?

Hmm... you just asked a good question. Should I use some sort of system that will force the people to come back to the website? Like software updates, promos, etc?

 

[bigballin6161]

I would get them to opt in somewhere on your website or if they get the software you should get their email adress. Then you can send messages in your autoresponder with just a teaser and a link back to your website for the rest of the post.

 

[seowulf]

Build a list on your website by offering a free report or some relevant ebook, and then when sending emails, refer people to your latest article/blog post.

 

[ryannull]

If you are offering downloadable software, make them submit their name and email. Start building a list.

You can also start a blog on how to use your software.

 

[wannabie]

Hmm... you just asked a good question. Should I use some sort of system that will force the people to come back to the website? Like software updates, promos, etc?

You have answered your own question by not actually answering mine

If you cannot think of reason of why someone would want to come back to your site then you have an issue

Software and downloads are normally a one time download so no need to go back to the source

So, you need to be interesting to a user, why is your site different to the other About 15,000,000 results (taken from Google) sites that are doing the exact same thing?

If you have software that's half decent, write up your own guides on how to use it, find things about it that no-one else has written about and go in from that angle!

Are you hosting the software yourself? If so make sure that you 301 the old/dead download links to your homepage so you maintain link juice

Make sure you brand the site, I once took on a client who had an awesome website but it only sold printing paper, nothing exciting at all and it struggled with one time purchases, you know what I did? Stuck a winking beaver in the shopping cart, everytime someone brought something it gave a wink and strangely enough the conversion rate for returning customers rose by over 47% within 3 months!!

I'm not saying you should stick a winking animal on your site but the point it this, you need to stand out and you certainly can't force people to come back, if you do you will kill your site

 

[WhiteDove]

I think that's a smart thing for me to start doing, have like a form where people put their email in and the software download link gets sent to them.
Now, the only problem I see with that is that I use linkbucks for my links, so I'd have to stop doing that now that I'll make the people submit their emails
for the "newsletter".

But yeah, I guess making the site different would drive people back to it. The only thing I see being a problem is how to accomplish that; the software I host are just some computer tools. Should I also include free downloads from other websites?

 

[wannabie]

I think that's a smart thing for me to start doing, have like a form where people put their email in and the software download link gets sent to them.
Now, the only problem I see with that is that I use linkbucks for my links, so I'd have to stop doing that now that I'll make the people submit their emails
for the "newsletter".

But yeah, I guess making the site different would drive people back to it. The only thing I see being a problem is how to accomplish that; the software I host are just some computer tools. Should I also include free downloads from other websites?

This is your issue with this line;

"But yeah, I guess making the site different would drive people back to it. The only thing I see being a problem is how to accomplish that; the software I host are just some computer tools. Should I also include free downloads from other websites?"

To be better than others you need to actually be better then others dude

You can't just go "its just some site where you can download software from"

its your product so you should be saying "My site has quicker downloads then any other website on the internet, I get custom discounts directly from the developers that cannot be beaten or matched by anyone else! My site tears the software apart to provide you with the best guides around.

The list goes on