A sticky website is one that people stay on longer and keep coming back to. The stickiest websites achieve this through increased visitor engagement and developing trust.
At Heart Internet we try to make our web hosting services as sticky as possible through means such as our web hosting blog, the free downloadable web hosting guides and our monthly web hosting newsletter.
In no particular order, below are some ideas for you to turn your website in to the digital equivalent of super glue…
Regularly updated content
Give them a reason to come back with something new to read each time and user centric blogs are a great way of doing this. Company news heavy blogs are not! Example: http://www.techcrunch.com
Clear and logical navigation
It can be easy for a visitor to get lost in a large website, become frustrated and then jump ship. To prevent this, sites such as Amazon use “bread crumb navigation” so the visitor knows exactly where they are in the site’s structure. E.g. Electronics & photo > Apple > iPod > iPod classic Example: http://www.amazon.co.uk
Prominent sign up links
Make it as easy as possible for your visitors to sign up to your newsletters, twitter, RSS, Facebook etc to ensure ongoing contact even when they are not on your website. Example: http://www.sitepoint.com/
Create a community
The ultimate in visitor engagement, however the drawback is you can lose control of the conversation and it takes on a life of its own. Forums are an obvious choice, but an active group who regularly comment on your blog posts (which is much easier to manage) also fall in to this category. To kick start your community it is vital you are actively involved in commenting and posting replies. Example: http://www.seomoz.org
Interactivity
Polls and surveys enable people to interact with your site. They are also an opportunity to do some back door research to find out more about your visitor’s tastes and adapt your site accordingly, as well as gathering press release worthy data! Example: http://www.problogger.net 
Regular competitions
Sometimes you need to bribe people to engage with your site and a great prize does just that. If the prize is big enough they are also good link bait. Example: http://www.webdesignerforum.co.uk
Free resources & tools
Free guides, widgets, templates, forms, scripts, research etc are always popular and draw people back time and time again. Example: http://www.smashingmagazine.com
Personalisation
People like dealing with people, and using you picture(s) and a strong ‘about us’ page helps to show the human side of your website and break down barriers. Example: http://www.seobook.com/about.shtml
> Clear and logical navigation
Absolutely – but I find there’s a horribly tendancy on some site to overdo “logical navigation”. Having many, many levels of subcategories or confusing/ambiguous top-level categories is offputting.
Can I find an iPod Touch under “Electronics & Photos”, “Sound and Vision”, “Portable Gaming Devices”?? When I’m in Sound and Vision, do I find it under “Touchscreen devices” or under “Multifunction devices?”. And so on.
eBay is quite annoying for this too I think, personally.
Great post that is engaging throughout and very useful towards my course.