CityCircles is a website and mobile app providing hyper-local news, events, promotions, fix-it projects, and other information for stops along Phoenix’s light rail system. As we progress towards launching our full site (we’re currently in beta), we face the challenge of making sure our site has the “stickiness factor.” We need people to visit — and to keep coming back.
Our site is a collaborative enterprise that incorporates an aspect of social networking, and relies on user-generated information for news and events. We’re taking care of the stop-specific promotions by working with local merchants, and we hope this creates an initial “sticky” factor by keeping users coming back to check for a new deal each day. Fix-it projects for local communities seem to be a big hit as well, and we’re hoping they add to the stickiness of the site.
Why do I keep talking about stickiness? Activity on our site is crucial. We’ve taken steps to generate stories and event listings from freelance journalists and local entities — however, we need to get users to start using the site and generating buzz.
We’ve laid the groundwork in our efforts last year by hosting events in local neighborhoods around the rail in order to gain support and demo our site. During these events, we met individuals who will most likely be our new adopters and influencers. Now we’ve got to take the example from social media sites such as Facebook and MySpace and spread the word to as many people (within our target audience) as we can to get users on our site!
Here we go…