How Contests Contribute to Your Site - The Wait
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Now that advertising is out of the way, your traffic knows about the contest. It’s time to give them another important element in contest creation: the wait. In other words, when is the payoff?
Some contests are practically instant. After all, even the lottery is a contest of sorts. With some tickets, you scratch off a box and find out right away whether or not you’ve won. With others, you might wait hours, even days to see if your numbers match. With every contest, there is some sort of wait -- whether you’re pulling off the tab or waiting until the grand drawing occurs.
How long will your wait be?
(Wow Insider, http://www.wowinsider.com/2008/10/10/reminder-caption-this-contest-ends-tonight/)
Planning a good contest is a fine science. You may hesitate to make results instant, because after all anticipation is one of the best parts of being in a contest. But you don’t want to keep people waiting too long, either. Keep in mind that Internet users don’t have long attention spans; most traffic spends less than sixty seconds glancing at a single page before they’ve moved on to the next. Making them wait for too long is a sure way to make your contest seem boring, and a boring contest is the very last thing you want for your Web site.
Next: The Reward >>
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