The main goal of any businessman is to attract new clients. But in reality, nothing makes the company more money than old customers. My article “5 tools you can add to your website to retain visitors” was made precisely to show you how you can increase sales with the help of certain apps. We are not saying that attracting new customers is bad and you shouldn’t do it. Not at all.

The main idea of website improvement

Expanding and growing your customer base is the most wonderful thing about marketing. What I mean is, that it’s equally important for your website and business to keep old customers satisfied. And for this, you need to improve your website with side-apps. This helps retain visitors and old clients, and it can definitely attract new people. Retaining old customers is certainly harder than attracting new ones. However, the business must work in both directions at once: with new and old customers. This ensures stable sales and a stable income.

To avoid user churn, you need to think over a marketing strategy before starting development. The famous slogan “don’t ask what the country can do for you, ask yourself what you can do for your country” works very well as an example of business development. But instead of a country, you should place your client.

To be completely honest, the main goal of most developers is profit. But you will be able to monetize your efforts only if you offer your audience a really necessary product. Therefore, even at the design stage, it is recommended to answer the main question: how will your website/application facilitate or improve the user’s life? If you have a simple, straightforward answer, you’re halfway there. In this article- I will try to explore the ways you can retain visitors and in-process gain new ones.

Why are people leaving my website?

The main reason visitors will be pressing the “back” button is the fact that a lot of websites are missing some of the key factors that can keep the visitor. The absence of functionality and good design can make your potential and old customers disappear within minutes. The website needs to look fresh and appeal to different groups of people. One of the ways to do it- is to exclude typos and mistakes while writing. Research shows that up to 17% of potential customers leave, because of typos and writing mistakes. Other customers might leave because of outdated design. But in general, this is all due to the fact- that a lot of people don’t invest enough time and money into their website. This includes such things as buying side-app subscriptions and services for website improvement.

People leaving website

The 5 side-apps that will keep my visitors

1. Botsify

Chatbots are script-based programs that are being implemented on social networks, messengers, and online consultants on websites. The task of a chatbot is to instantly respond to the client and not distract the manager with trivial questions. For example, if a client wants to know the work schedule, the bot will send the client the current schedule or any other info the client might need. This method has been proven to be more efficient than the usual QnA’s. And it also saves managers time and also ensures customer loyalty.

So what functions does Botsify have?

Well for starters, it allows you to create a bot that can help clients with frequently asked questions, as well as greet clients on the website and collect their reviews. To make statistics. Chatbots are a fairly new technology, that’s why many people find them interesting. People wish to test the capabilities of these chatbots and understand how they might respond to different commands. The pure interest in this technology can keep people on your website, even if they are not buying anything- they are adding traffic to your website. Last but not least, chatbots are very efficient, usually when users need help with something they need it NOW. And that’s exactly why chatbots are irreplaceable, instead of monitoring your website 24/7- leave all the work to the chatbot.

Botsify

2. Google Analytics

To know everything that happens on your website, you definitely need Google Analytics. By analyzing Google reports, you can find out what ads or search queries most often come to your website, how long visitors have been on it, and what blog articles are read the most. Using this tool to improve business performance, you can adjust the advertising campaign and budget, so that you can manage your resources more efficiently.

Google analytics comparison

As it is stated on the official website:

“The service has both free and paid features. The free version of Google Analytics is capable of analyzing 5 million pages per month, which is not enough to get an overall picture. Therefore, sooner or later, most still resort to using the paid Premium version. GA is used by both small businesses and large corporations. Google Analytics is versatile because every business follows the same rules. It doesn’t matter whether you have a small business with a very small number of employees. Or a large company that has lots of workers. The same tools are used by both the webmaster of a small business and the web analytics department of a large corporation. Google Analytics will help you analyze the traffic of any web resource”.

3. WebsiteVoice

Using this service- you can convert all selected text on your website to audio. The audio will not only be high quality but also won’t sound as robotic as the voices used by other apps with similar features. WebsiteVoice supports multiple languages and can detect the content that needs to be audited. The customization is quite good, and unlike some of the apps on the list, it’s very easy to install. There are currently 3 plans available, the cheapest one being 9$ a month. But that is a very reasonable price for the services that are provided.

WebsiteVoice home

There are several upsides to using WebsiteVoice

  1. People with visual impairment will find WebsiteVoice very useful. It helps people harvest information that they couldn’t before. Catering to these groups of people will only open new horizons for your business.
  2. Dyslexia is a big problem in our society, according to “Dyslexia Action”- around 14% of the population of the world suffers from dyslexia. Some people who have dyslexia don’t even know it. They just find it very difficult to read and write- but don’t know why. WebsiteVoice can definitely make the lives of such people easier. It only helps your business if you can offer a way to discover products to people with dyslexia. Even if they cannot read about the product, this side-app will help them listen to it.
  3. I love audiobooks, they save so much time and you can listen to them on the go. Listening to audiobooks helped me improve myself. Using WebsiteVoice I actually managed to get work done so much faster, I was listening to different articles while driving a car, and managed to save time. People with a busy schedule will definitely find it really helpful. The voice sounds natural and is being improved all the time.
  4. The way we learn changes from person to person. Albert Einstein once said: “if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” This is very true, different people use different ways to absorb information, some people can just read to understand the given info. Some people need to picture it and visualize it. And then there are the people who need to listen to the information to be able to understand it fully. So all of these categories of people must have the option to study the way that helps them the most. This is why WebsiteVoice can be a great studying tool for teens.
  5. Giving illiterate people information. This can be specifically good for governments that need to pass information to all of the population in case of an emergency. As well as help education programs in third world countries.

4. Interact

Interact is a tool for creating quizzes on your website or public page. This can help you get the recognition of old users and drive traffic to your website. It is built for businesses and has a lot of features. Generally it’s considered a very good side-app to add to your website.

Interact

5. CropVid

It’s not a side-app that generally doesn’t help your website that much, but it does improve your ability to create content. You can easily crop videos that can be added to your website later. Generally used for influencers, and is considered hip with the younger generation of users. The free trial is quite good, and if you enjoy it- you should definitely get a starter pack since it does help a lot with the content flow.

CropVid

So why do I need Cropvid? Do I even need videos on my website?

Without a doubt- it is quite certain that if you can provide your visitors with a video review of your product- it will only increase the popularity of the product. This will distinguish you from competitors who don’t do this and will increase your competitiveness.

A video that lasts up to 2 minutes can keep visitors on the website quite well. Even though search engines don’t recognize video content that well, the ordinary user will find it very interesting and will stay on the page. And that’s one of the reasons why implementing videos on your website is so important. This method works best in online stores but can be implemented in other areas as well.

Conclusion

The analysis shows that there is no universal customer retention algorithm. But there are general guidelines, following which it is easier to develop an effective marketing strategy that takes into account the characteristics of a particular product. One of the things to keep in mind, Loyal customers bring the company more profit and are easier to please than those who make only one or two purchases. Plus, customers who leave are more likely to go to competitors rather than just stop using the product.

To understand how many customers stay with you in a certain period of time, you need to calculate the customer retention rate - CRR. Be sure to calculate CRR separately for segments with different activity - those who buy more often and the people who buy less often. This will give a more accurate picture. CRR can be used to forecast seasonal differences and plan other metrics for the future.

But the most important thing is to be technologically advanced and use new technologies as much as possible. This is very easy nowadays with the use of different applications most of which are very cheap or even free. Don’t be afraid to create your own content for your website using these applications and most of all- always try to make your product accessible to as many people as possible including people with disabilities.

Personally, I use only some of the apps that are listed here, but they have severely increased my productivity. I am making new content every day for my public page/blog and get even more views. But when I switched to a premium version of some of the apps- everything got even better. I’ve received much more feedback from my viewers and I managed to get my message across to a bigger audience because I was catering to different groups of people- some of which were not my viewers before. This is why I consider that it’s important to buy the premium version. It doesn’t cost that much and for the money you pay- you get lots of new clients as well as retaining the old ones.