Is your web site “sticky”? The more engaging, informative, and interesting your site is, the more likely visitors are to spend time at your site and return time after time. That’s stickiness. And it’s a good thing.

The first step to making your site stickier is lowering the drop-off rate at your home page by making it more appealing to visitors.

How can you make your home page more appealing? Don’t rush headlong into making major “improvements.” First, make sure that you really understand your target audience. “We have learned through doing thousands of tests that you’re almost always wrong when you guess what your customers are going to prefer,” says Jamie Roche, president of Offermatica, a software company that provides web site testing and optimization services. “You can never anticipate the preferences of the broad audience that you get on the Internet.”

Roche recommends taking a look at your site from the visitor’s perspective to determine what is making it “unsticky.” “Go to your site,” he explains, “watch it load, and ask: ‘What is it about this experience that makes me leave?’ One thing you’ll probably find is that it’s too slow. You may have too much content, or your graphics might be too big.”

Let’s face it, most visitors don’t have the time or the patience to wait for large graphics to load. If it’s important for you to include graphics or pictures on your site, keep the image sizes as small as possible, so they don’t cause your site pages to load too slowly.

Visitors might also have problems figuring out where to go to find specific information, Roche says. “The major mistake here is that, in an effort to make your site attractive to the search engines by loading the page with keywords, you’ve made it text-heavy. Or it looks like a Tokyo electronics store - visual chaos that’s overwhelming.”

Simplify, simplify, simplify. When it comes to stickiness, it’s all about making a great first impression. Roche recommends making your home page as simple as possible. “We talk a lot about radical simplification,” he says. “With clients who test radically simplifying the first page that people see, almost always the radically simplified version beats out the more dense version.”

When Roche talks about radical simplification, he means it. “Ideally, you should count every element on your page and try to get rid of two-thirds of them,” he advises. “Look at everything on your home page and ask yourself, ‘It is absolutely necessary? Is it seasonally relevant?’” Lots of white space increases the likelihood that visitors will see your key site elements.

“If you make the decision to simplify, you’re making the decision to not show stuff,” explains Roche. “It’s a hard decision.” He suggests that your home page might just provide clear access to the key products areas, or feature one or two important products and provide text links for other products.

Trust is a factor. In addition to sporting a clean, uncluttered look, you want your home page to convey credibility. “A lot of sites fail from a trust standpoint,” Roche says. “Often, people conduct a search and click onto a site, the page loads, and they don’t feel confident, so they leave.”

What can you do to make your site visitors have more confidence in your online business? “A professional design is optimum, of course,” Roche states. He also recommends placing your security information on your home page. “If you accept major credit cards, for example, feature their logos. You want to be associated with things that are trustworthy.”

“We also promote brand borrowing,” says Roche. “If you offer top-of-the-line brands, get them up there and feature the brand logos. People are looking for the trust that’s been built up in the brands. And that trust has a halo effect, especially for small retailers.”