Clever business types recognize the fact that it takes less time, effort and money to retain customers rather than finding new ones. The same goes for website traffic.

Here are two strategies to keep visitors coming back for more, which establishes relationships and builds loyalty:

1. Offer a free tool or service on your website. This will keep visitors coming back, and when they’re ready to invest, you’ll be top of mind.

2. Build an e-mail list. By turning your visitors into newsletter subscribers, you’ll maintain contact and be able to highlight certain aspects of your website or business with every mail-out.

While it’s important to reach new visitors, never overlook opportunities to hold on to your existing website traffic.

Too many businesses, large and small, turn people off with self-absorbed websites.

Does your website content merely brag about your company’s “industry leading” products, features and services? If so, you might be boring your visitors and helping out your competition.

Customer-centric content is a quick and effective way to engage visitors and turn them into customers.

Plus, from a branding perspective, how you communicate with your target market says a lot about your company’s true focus. Are you striving to provide clients solutions and opportunities, or are you just out to grab additional dollars?

To be a true customer-driven business, you should be orienting all business messages and processes to customer wants and needs. In fact, the driving force of your company and culture should be to meet those desires to the fullest.

Here’s a typical and all-too-common example of self-centric website content:

We’re the best learning management system

(Company name) is the revolutionary online training system. We’ve won awards…

What’s this company focusing on? Its customers’ needs? Supposedly not.

Here are some guidelines to help establish customer-centric website content:

• Get familiar with your target audience before writing. What are their concerns, for instance?  This helps to position your product or service as a solution to their problems.
• Promote what visitors want or need — not what you sell. Your product’s won awards? That’s terrific, but be sure to accentuate what it means to your visitors.
• Focus on benefits rather than features. What does your visitor have to gain from your product or service?
• Speak to, not at your customers. Build a rapport with your visitors by using a second-person voice, such as “you” and “your.”

By communicating to potential clients with content geared to their needs and wants, you’ll keep them on your website longer. And the longer you keep their attention, the more they’ll realize how you can fulfill their desires.

Remember, in the age of the Internet, consumers are in the driver’s seat. If you’re not catering to your visitors, the likes of Google, Bing and Yahoo will quickly guide them to a competitor that does.

Business never sleeps. And with the advent of the Internet never has the saying seemed so true to its meaning.

Every hour of every day, millions of people in every corner of the world log on to the Internet. They use it as a means of communication; a means of research; and as a means of purchasing products and services with their hard-earned money. To that notion some might even question how we ever survived without it.

Business websites are an integral part of the Internet world. If yours is lost or dead in cyberspace, you sit at a distinct disadvantage disconnected from a vast and growing customer base, now more than one billion strong.

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I recently received both fan mail and hate mail in response to comments featured in Backbone Magazine surrounding Flash-based websites.

My statement: “Most Flash intros are not created with the visitor and business in mind, but rather as an opportunity to showcase a programmer’s abilities,” also sparked exchanges on Ubuntu Forums, drawing more than 1,700 visitors and over 70 comments.

“You miss the point completely,” e-mailed one website developer. “Something needs to jump out at the reader, or you blend in with the rest of the Web.”

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A Melbourne start-up claiming it will soon unleash the Web’s first “true real-time search engine” has grabbed the attention of search engine giant Google.

Slated for release at the end of June, the online tool will give users the power to scope the entire Web “live to the second,” explains MyLiveSearch’s co-creator and software developer Rob Gabriel, 35.

The outcome? He claims better, more relevant results.

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Millions of websites attempt to seduce Google and its competitors to score high search engine rankings. But what is the best path to this lucrative romance?

While there are more than a few website promotion tactics, you have two primary means to establish a relationship: court Google and other search engines with alluring web content; or simply pay to get lucky.

Pay Per Click Campaigns

This popular search engine marketing tactic can get you substantial presence in just hours or days. However, after you clear the floor of fraudulent clicks (from competitors eating up your marketing budget) and tire kickers, you might end up with less-than-anticipated conversions, if any at all.

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To achieve business growth, you need to focus on your strengths and hire others to take care of the rest.

Unfortunately, entrepreneurs often fail to employ this fundamental business growth strategy.

Whether it’s driven by pride or fear, I meet many entrepreneurs who have difficultly delegating, including recently: a fashion designer who won’t let go of her accounting; a pastry chef who refuses to let designers get near his website; and a furniture maker who turns down professional help to arrange his storefront.

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More than 93% of Internet users indicated they favour speed and readability over appearance when visiting websites, according to a recent online poll conducted by Webcopyplus.

When Internet users were asked what’s likely to drive them away from a website:

• 51.2% indicated “slow load times”
• 42.2% specified “weak web copy”
• 6.6% noted “poor visual presentation”
• A total of 258 users participated in the web writing service provider’s online poll during a four-month period that ended in April of 2007.

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Clients and students frequently question why website writing should hover around a grade eight level.

The purpose is to promote readability.

It’s well known in the web writing community that the vast majority of online visitors don’t read word-by-word — they scan.

That’s why plain language works well on the Web.

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When writing web copy for the all-too-noisy World Wide Web, nothing is more powerful than simplicity.

As a result, your web copy messages need to be clearly defined and concise. Easier said than done.

Entrepreneurs, like artists, tend to complicate things when they don’t have clear vision or direction.

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