Don't rely on passing trade

If I was going to open a shop, the one thing I would not rely on is passing trade - especially if I was one of many shops in the same location, most of whom had far more extensive resources than I to attract people to their shops.

So it always amazes me when retail web site owners, as one recently said to me, hope that people will stumble (he said find) on their site and recommend it to all their friends.

Yes, of course some will, but I think he was missing the point. If potential and actual customers do visit your site, then they are a precious resource. Find out who they are and they reach out to them and get them back to your site time and time again. If you have new offerings, or special deals, tell them about it. Do not hope that they will check your site every day.

One of the reasons that email is so good for doing this is that (Blackberries and other PDAs excepted), people are in situ when reading email - your website is just a click away. The click though rate from email is far higher than from other media - far far higher.

There is an argument that says people make less instantaneous buying decisions when browsing after an email prompt. Possibly this is true, but when taken in the context of the extraordinarily low conversion rates from other media, you still achieve more tangible business from email.

So if you have a site, and you want people to visit regularly, find out who they are, and use email to prompt them to the site.