Helping people especially first time visitors feel at ease is an important aspect both to contain traffic thus turning visitors into subscribers for establishing a readership. Your blog’s design and navigational structure count but here I’ll tell you some additional goodies you could add to make visitors stick to your blog after a first time visit or revisit.
help them subscribe to your blog
Not everybody understands the meaning behind those orange RSS icons, how about telling them how to stick to your blog when they first landed on a post and thought coming back but didn’t know how to stay in touch?
What Would Seth Godin Do is a nice Wordpress plugins allowing you to place your own welcome message for your visitors and telling them how to stay in touch.
After uploading and activating the plugin, go to Options > WWSGD and write that welcome text message and don’t forget to place your RSS and email subscription links too, telling visitors what they are for. You can also customise where the message should appear either at the beginning of a post or at the end. Under the Repetition text box, put the number of times you want the message to appear for that same person. That is if you put 3, the message will disappear only after the 3rd consecutive visit.
Thank them for taking the time to read you
A polite email thanking a visitor for reading you might well say a lot of how much you care about him. Kind of making him a special visitor. But no need to tire yourself writing countless emails for every visitor.
The Comment Relish plugin will send a first time commentator an email. Now the fun part is that you can customise that email sent like telling the visitor how much you liked seeing him around and not forgetting too, putting concise information in how to stick around through subscription.
Upload and activate the Comment Relish plugin. A new tab will appear among the plugins section named Comment Relish. Make sure under the drop-down menu of Enable Comment Relish, you select True. Then fill the other fields which are somewhat intuitive.
So when first time commentator puts a comment, he will be receiving shortly after your thank you email.
welcome them back
Show visitors how much you care for every of their visits and revisits. The Welcome back plugin allows you to put a nice welcome back message that will greet visitors on their second and further visits displaying their myBlogLog avatar and a message welcoming them back and politely asking them if they liked reading your blog, so why not subscribe to it?
Download the Welcome back plugin, upload and activate it. Then using your favourite FTP program, open your sidebar.php and paste that line of code where you want the welcome back message to appear :
<?php cur_welcome(); ?>
I would suggest you putting it above your subscriptions/RSS icons and in the highest region of your sidebar. See my leftmost sidebar for an idea.
If you want some further welcome back coding, here are some from Zeo to dress up your blog :
Put this code above your comment box, to welcome back a user who has already commentated: I would suggest pasting it instead of the Leave a Reply text which is usually wrapped around a <h3 id="respond"> tag in your comments.php file.
<h3 id="respond">
<?php if ( ($comment_author != "") && (!$user_ID) ) { ?>
Welcome back, want to share something <?php echo $comment_author; ?>?
<?php } else { ?>
Share Your Comments
<?php } ?>
</h3>
Put this code anywhere you want to welcome back visitors with a nice message after a certain amount of visits. Write your message instead of the welcome back text, inside the quotes found on the 3rd line of code.
<?php if ( isset($_COOKIE['comment_author_'.COOKIEHASH]) ) {
$comment_author = $_COOKIE['comment_author_'.COOKIEHASH];
echo 'Welcome back, '.$comment_author.'!';
} ?>
Send some link love their way
Here’s a nice way to win over a revisit from a Wordpress bloggers who commented on your blog using the Show Top Commentators and No-follow plugins features.
Download and activate both of these plugins. Then whenever someone comments and appears on the Top Commentators list of your blog, they will get a link in their Wordpress dashboard as incoming links. Sure they would be eager to click to your own blog.
That’s it, some tricks you can use to win over first time visitors to make them loyal readers. If you have got any doubt or need help on any part, please do tell me either through the comments or by contacting me and I’ll be glad to help you out.
related reading:
- Best of Wordpress theme galore
- The proper way to write code in your blog posts
- The sure way to get at the top of any blog toplist and boost your traffic
- Making it quick and easy for you to bookmark and earn traffic
- How to send 1000 people to a 404 error page
- How to blog like a pro
- How Ads Really Work: Superfans and Noobs
- How To Convert New Visitors Into Regular Readers
Tags: 45 Comments
45 responses so far ↓
How-to turn visitors into returning visitors…
Quick tips making sure first time visitors stick around your blog. Turning them into a loyal readership….
Thank you for the great tips. I’m always looking for new plug-ins to check out!
Testing my plugin
have you found anything wrong, or something you’d want to have?
[…] reader, it would be pretty awesome in building good readership. I just ran into a plugin on Blogosquare, which shows a nice welcome message along with the MyBlogLog avatar of that […]
Great post! I just stumbled it and also dugg it… I downloaded two plugins and can’t wait to use them. Cheers
I liked the welcome back plugin, its really cool with author name integrated
I thought this was an excellent post, but more more importantly your blog layout is amazing.
Turning visitors into returning visitors….
Getting traffic is wonderful, but if you’re a blogger return traffic is what you’re looking for. There are a lot of articles out there on getting people to return to your site, but the best I’ve seen recently is by Hans at BlogoSquar…
Good tips. I like them.
Blog owners especially newer ones don’t know the tips to get first time visitors. So, it would be nice if you also cover that topic and help them get visitors and then retain them. Tips on SEO will be a good start.
Best regards
sri
[…] to turn visitors into a loyal readership I’ve just posted some tips into how you can make visitors feel at ease with your blog and make them stick around. It would be great if you could contribute in what you think might help in doing this. Your […]
Hi Kailani, thank you for reading and checking the plugins. If you’ve got any issues, do tell me and I’ll be glad to help you. Btw were it you that posted something to Squidoo? I’m sorry I think I deleted it without checking the link, thinking it was spam?
Thanks Andrea for giving the community such a great stuff
I was thinking of perhaps an additional features like telling the visitor the number of posts/activities that occured after his last visit. Something like bundling Alex King’s WP Since Last Visit features. What do you say? Wouldn’t it be nice?
thanks for spreading the word Susie. I shall be coming with more like this, featuring other aspects of your blog that could turn visitors in, so don’t forget to keep in touch.
If you have got any issues with the plugins, do tell and I’ll send help in your way. Thanks for commenting.
Thanks for the compliment Kevin
The theme I’m using is called myJournal and you can get it free here.
sure Sri, I’ll be covering on these in more details in further series. I didn’t feel like making this the ultimate guide, you know the long to read stuffs
thanks for dropping Sri. It always makes me happy to see you around.
Sorry, I missed the reply
of course, that’s a great idea, as soon as I’ll finish my exams I will surely try out that
thank you for the tip
[…] How-to turn visitors into returning visitors - Great tutorial on how to make your blog a friendlier place […]
[…] How-to turn visitors into returning visitors […]
Such a nice and detail explanation. I must say that I proudly use Do-Follow and Commend relish plug-in.
Thanks for enjoying it Ajay. Is the comments relish plugins working all good for you? since many times I find the mail getting into the visitors junk mail section because many email service would see it as spam
i use it on my blog….
that’s a great plugins!!!!!!
[…] How-to turn visitors into returning visitors […]
[…] How-to turn visitors into returning visitors […]
Very valuable ideas. Good to add to my laundry list of things to do for prepping a blog for life in the real world. Along with theme design and building content one needs to know what “equipment” one needs, as well as how to promote it externally. Thanks.
@ Erjati
that’s just a small list of other requisites. Using Wordpress should be the first step to a pro blog since with the added features of its plugins, you can take your blog to the next level quickly and easily. I shall be touching on more such topics in the near future, do stay tuned and thanks so much for reading
[…] How-to turn visitors into returning visitors: various requisite Wordpress plugins to make visitors feel at ease. […]
I like the “What Would Seth Godin Do” plugin idea and currently implementing it to my blog
Wow! These are fantastic tips to have… I’ll be using them in my blog… and you got a reader…
@ David Jaeger & Jermayn
Thanks indeed for reading through. Hope you’ll like the various features of these marvels.
Yeah i do like them and have implemented the “what would” plugin which you can check out of course
When I get time, I may fiddle with the settings and look a bit though
@ Jermayn
sure, try making the message as friendly as possible and make sure to limit the time the message appears since that might become frustrating for returning visitors to get each and everytime the welcome message.
@Hans
The only thing I dont like about it at the moment is that it appears on the excerpt when displayed at the top of each post..
Other than that, it is great. Will prob also modify the wording to include a post that I did to explain what RSS is all about.
[…] How-to turn visitors into returning visitors […]
your feeling emotional is great!!!! i’ve never seen it bevore
@ Johannes
I’m using the cloudy smilies which you can use you too, check it out here.
This post is great! I found you via Stumble. Keep up the good works
[…] How-to turn visitors into returning visitors: various requisite Wordpress plugins to make visitors feel at ease. […]
[…] that I once again have too many blogs going, I am once again interested in how to encourage visitors to return to my blog(s) for another read. Blogosquare addressed this in his June 7 ‘07 […]
[…] How-to turn visitors into returning visitors […]
[…] How-to turn visitors into returning visitors: various requisite Wordpress plugins to make visitors feel at ease. […]
[…] How-to turn visitors into returning visitors - requisite Wordpress plugins to make visitors feel at ease. Helping people especially first time visitors feel at ease is an important aspect both to contain traffic thus turning visitors into subscribers for establishing a readership. Your blog’s design and navigational structure count but here you can find some additional goodies you could add to make visitors stick to your blog after a first time visit or revisit. […]
really very nice tips.. i implemented some of them.. thanks a lot..
Thanks for the great article.
[…] How-to turn visitors into returning visitors: various requisite Wordpress plugins to make visitors feel at ease. […]