Five 80’s songs to make sticky websites

Let’s talk about building stickiness. Sticky like rice. What makes a website sticky? In other words, why do we go back to same site time and again? With this month’s article I am outing myself as someone who grew up listening to 80-ish (one 90’s and one 70’s song thrown in) music . Here are 5 songs about people who come back to websites and help make them sticky. (Click on the song titles below to take a take ride back while you read this article!)

We Belong

Tribe members are a brand’s strongest advocates. They feel like they helped build something (I am…trying…to resist another 80’s pop reference…but I can’t!!) and will go to bat for the website they are a part of. Brands have relied upon way tribes before social networking became cool. Avon and Mary Kay cosmetics relied upon women selling to women like themselves. Amazon relies on book lovers sharing their love for the written word with others like themselves. The key is to be driven by niche. If you share a deep love for something with someone else, you already have something in common, so relating with them becomes that much easier. And if you side with the small guy fighting the big guy than the community feeling is even stronger. Consider the linux community or the teeny bopper MySpace community. Both rely on people sharing what they have in common. Music, code, wanting to belong to just belong, whatever.

The Future of the Future

I love the promise of what they are about to become. I love them and I promise to love whatever they do next. I am in love with the future of this brand. Basecamp became successful even before it launched because it could rely on a strong fan base that read the 37 signals blog everyday. Google has future fans who flock it’s official and ‘fan’ blogs and scour it’s labs. This user consumes not just based on subject but based on what their idol is currently interested in or promoting. They are fanatical about their idol and will irrationally support it’s future endevours. So Google completes its grid and we follow and invent rationale to use their next beta app. Firefox built itself a brand by having loyal fans that cut and pasted banners promoting the new browser even when it was a fledgling. They had bought into the promise. Into the future.

I Just Can’t Stop Loving You

What started as a hobby has become something much bigger. And this love must be shared with others and celebrated whenever, wherever. The love could be for a hobby, a technology, a gadget, a game or even food. This person probably trolls sites such as mac rumors or wii’s world, has RSS feeds to sites dedicated to their favorite subject. They might be closet junkies choosing to only revel with others who share this love. They appear normal from the outside. Inside, however they hunger for new information and sharing with others (sometimes under aliases). They will spend some time everyday keeping up with their interest. This person will also sign up for newsgroups and even meet people IRL about a subject that is close to their hearts. It was love at first click. My friends at Industrial Brand are “out” as big-time foodies!

Don’t Forget Me (When I’m Gone)

Just browsing as they call ‘em. The surfer starts out not knowing where they are going, just that they got time to kill. They bounce from one site to the next, clicking on blogrolls, del.icio.us links or just clicking for the sake of it. But sooner or later they realise that the web is really a small place and end up coming back to the same site. There is huge oppurtunity here as this user can be seduced into staying or coming back. They got time. Surfers will come back to sites that look, feel and behave differently than other sites because, they are more memorable and somehow managed to stand out from the other 50 sites that were pinged earlier that day. Give them a newsletter or a contest, get them to sign up and chances are they may just click their way back to you.

Daddy Cool

Give me the latest gossip. Tell me about the latest trend. Show me something new. I am a cool hunter on the prowl. I got people who rely on me to tell them the latest greatest and I can’t dissappoint! This person thrives on sharing and being the first. They depend on finding and dispersing information about new things to maintain their ‘cool’ status. They will forward, post on newsgroups and comment about the latest, greatest just to be the first to do so. This type of user created the buzz factor that surrounds the front-page of Digg and makes Tech crunch spit out one of the top RSS feeds on the internet.

Got to tell you, writing this article made me want to gel my hair, stitch some pleats in my pants and wear white socks (again). Not!