StumbleUpon can become an internet business’ best friend when used in the right way.
This social website lets users find information they seek by means of ratings given by other users. Clearly, any user would trust the opinion of another like him rather than the business itself. After all, the business is trying to sell its products and has a profit motive, but other users don’t. Their opinion is likely to be far more objective and accurate. This is why Stumble Upon is known as a recommendation engine rather than a search engine.
When your site is listed on StumbleUpon with a good number of Thumbs Up ratings, potential customers get a positive impression about it. Such positively inclined visitors to your site are more likely to convert to customers. This makes it important for you to ensure that your site gets more Thumbs Up ratings than Thumbs Down.
Getting your site into the StumbleUpon listings enables you to widen your reach too. But using that reach to promote goodwill about your brand is entirely in your hands or can even be entrusted to a professional social media service. It is clear however, that you need to invest enough effort into your site to make it attractive, useful and user friendly.
Keep the standards high when you are designing your site. This applies to content, design, layout, navigation, linking and other aspects. Make sure that your site presents a welcoming home page that tells visitors exactly what they can find and where. Your internal pages should fulfill the commitments made through the home page. Offers and discounts are a good way to interest visitors to delve deeper into your pages, but only if they are actually beneficial to the user.
Keep in mind that a user develops a good feeling about a site that has helped him in some way. Your site may have given him information he was looking for. It may have brought a good deal offered elsewhere to his notice. It may have saved him some money in some way. Whatever it may be, if your site has been beneficial to a user, he is sure to reward you with a Thumbs Up! And this, in turn, improves your business goodwill.