Making your site "sticky" simply means creating a site that keeps the visitor within the site as long as possible and getting them to return often. Making YOUR site "sticky" involves some extra work on your part, but drawing in traffic and keeping it at your site IS your goal, right? Here are a few things you can do to do just that:

Make sure your visitors know you're still alive! Update monthly, weekly if possible, to keep the content fresh. People want to see something new when they return to your site. If you offer a service or sell a product, your visitors will more likely turn into customers if they know you're still active. You could add company news or site updates to your main page.

=> OFFER FREE EMAIL

Even if you don't own a domain, you can still offer email through several services. If you do own a domain, even better! Whenever the person wants to check their mail, they have to return to YOUR site to login. Here are the two top free email providers for website owners wanting to offer email to their users:

* http://www.everyone.net
* http://www.bigmailbox.com



=> BUILD A COMMUNITY WITHIN YOUR SITE

This may be one of the more challenging methods of generating return visits, but it's well worth it if you're successful. Build a community by offering a forum or message board on a topic your visitors are interested in. Getting them started is hard, but once you've got it going, people will return to check if anybody has responded to their posts or to read the latest threads. You can easily run one, whether you have CGI and Perl access on your web host or if you'd rather have a remotely hosted message board:

* http://www.infopop.com
* http://www.everyone.net

If you can successfully make your site "sticky" enough to bring your visitors back to your site repeatedly, you're guaranteed success!