Some things that help to get players to stay, is give them something to stay for, first appearances makes a huge difference, you must keep a certain level of professionalism (make it not look like some 12 year old is running it), make sure you always have staff online, otherwise it looks like it's poorly managed.
After taking a quick look around the server, this a few things that could help...
A lot of players tend to be very judgmental on servers based on first appearances. When I first joined the server, I was looking at a wall of signs that say Info.. This was quite bland in my opinion.
As i walked out of the spawn building, i noticed that it was a really nice build, it was a nice.. relaxing spawn. Then I just saw a lot of signs that direct you to the wilderness, however. But I chose to ignore that and wanted to see what the server had to offer, and I went into empty building after empty building, (a lot of walking) then I realized that the spawn town was just empty... most the houses didn't really have any purpose other than appearances.
Effective Spawns can be some of the most difficult things to make because there are a lot of things to take into account:
- It needs to look good
- If you have a building, it should have a purpose other than just to look good
- You don't want to have to make players walk a long distance for anything
- You don't want players to have to read too much
- It needs to be informative
- It needs to be small.
- Builds are nice, but not all builds are good for spawns
Also for some of the more mature players, seeing people talk with stuff like... <*Stoners ... is VERY unappealing.
Another thing, try and make everything in chat look a little better, more appealing.
i.e. change chat's and announcement's format/colors
(I was just typing as I thought of stuff)
(Everything I said is stuff that matters in MY opinion, may not make a big difference)
