Everyone loves a story. People start reading a story and keep reading until story is finished. If you visitors start reading a story on your site they will likely read rest of site.

The links on you site can help you or ruin you. If you link to another site be sure that link opens site in a new window. This is a must. If linked site opens in same window you have just lost a potential customer. Now only way he can come back is by hitting back button. Will he do it?

Now back to flowers and bees and butterflies. Lets talk about bees and butterflies that come back. Why did they come back? With flower it was probably just luck. With your web site it needs to be much more then luck. You have to plan it. They have to want to come back for something of value (to them at least) that you have on your site.

What brought them back was content. Some how they did not learn everything on first (or previous) visit or they wanted to re-read it. Or maybe they realize that content may have changed and they can get new information. Or maybe your site offers a service that they want to use again and (hopefully) again.

I call a web site that keeps visitors coming back a sticky web site. It involves extra work to make a sticky web site. However, if your goal is to have your potential customers coming back often then extra work is worth it.

Some of best items to make a website sticky is a free service or free content. Examples of services could be a search engine submission service, a forum, current news display, or some kind of game. A service can be almost anything that a visitor can use or view over and over.

Content can be similar to a service. An article directory can be content. Perhaps you write articles for you ezine. Post them on your website. Let your visitors know that they are free to use as long as they don’t change them and they include resource box. If someone uses they article you could get another link back to your site.

Other examples of content could be free software of ebooks. Some people offer free vacation certificates. A free course can also be some excellent sticky content. Book reviews could also work. A weekly survey can also be a good way to bring certain visitors back every week.

Change your site often, at least monthly. Weekly changes are better. People will know that you are actively managing your site and that you want to provide a good service. This will help create a positive impression and turn visitors into customers.

Most people do not buy or join first time they view a web site. Sometimes they come back several times before surrendering money for that which your site offers. This is main reason why you want a sticky site.

If you can successfully make your site sticky enough to bring your visitors back to your site repeatedly, you're guaranteed success. Just keep bringing visitors to your site, and then back again, as flowers do with bees and butterflies.

A - Which legally you must comply with.

AA - Which you should achieve; or your site will still be inaccessible to a large number of people.

AAA - Which should be aspired towards as far as is possible.

Achieving accessibility Practical measures you can take include structuring site so that it will work with a screen-reader; ensuring site can be navigated without aid of a mouse; and enabling viewers to change text size and background colours.

Ensure that you provide alt-tags for sounds and video, not just for images; and make sure that text you provide is descriptive (i.e. not 'company logo'). You should also make use of descriptive links (i.e. not 'click here' or 'learn more'), as screen-readers read links out of context.

How to check your site There are many partly-automated 'accessibility checkers' on web (the most well known being Bobby: bobby.watchfire.com and most thorough being Site Valet: valet.webthing.com/access/url.html); which assess websites against their interpretations of W3C-WAI guidelines. You can use these 'checkers' to see how your website fares accessibility-wise, but you must not rely on them.

Accessibility checkers can't be perfect, and it must be emphasised that a website is not accessible just because one or more says so. For example, most don't check whether alternative image text is appropriate; and those that do mostly get it wrong. (Believe it or not, technology still has its limitations)… The checkers can also (less commonly) note accessibility issues where there are none, due to their interpretation of guidelines.

Does accessible = boring? Accessibility does not mean that your website has to be black and white, boring, or text-only. Many sites have used text-only pages as a solution to accessibility; however by following W3C guidelines it should be unnecessary in almost all cases to go down this route.

Take a look around www.fwoss.com. Our site is neither colourless nor dull, yet it is AAA compliant throughout. Accessible websites do not need to be designed very differently to inaccessible ones; they just need to be carefully constructed with flexibility in mind.

What you can do Getting your website accessible need not be a headache if you go to a qualified software development company. Make sure you run their website through one of above checkers first, to see how it fairs.