A lot of successful websites depend on returning visitors to account for a major part of their traffic. Returning visitors are easier to convert into paying customers because the more often they return to a site, the more trust they have in that site. The credibility issue just melts away. Hence, keep your visitors coming back to your site with the following methods:

1) Forums are a great place to start

People on the web today like to be heard. It is sort of the Web 2.0 scenario you hear being thrown around. If you give customers a place to either voice their opinions, or to just meet other people, then they are more likely to stick around.

2) Blogs are another way

Keep an online journal, or more commonly known as a blog, on your site and keep it updated with latest news about yourself. Human beings are curious creatures and they will keep their eyes glued to the monitor if you post fresh news frequently. You will also build up your credibility as you are proving to them that there is also a real life person behind the website.

3) Let Your Customers Take Some Surveys

Polls can serve 2 purposes. For starters, if you post a pretty decent poll, people will keep coming back to see what is going on and how the vote is going. The other thing you can do is use your poll to get content from your customers and then use this to optimize your site a bit better.

4) Oh How I Love Games

Games are pretty big online. Now, you don’t have to have the best games. You can just have some simple games office people can play when they are supposed to be working. Maybe even offer some prizes for top scores. Might be another good way to collect some names and emails.

5) People (and Google) like new content often

Update your site frequently with fresh content so that every time your visitors come back, they will have something to read on your site. This is the most widely known and most effective method of attracting returning visitors, but this is also the least carried out one because of the laziness of webmasters. No one will want to browse a site that looks the same over ten years, so keep your site updated with fresh bites!