You've got your website up and published, and you are proud of what you have accomplished.
You have spent some time building links and getting noticed by search engines, but your stats show you that most of your visitors don't stay around very long! What can you do to make your site more attractive, and most of all, make your visitors want to return time and time again?
If you have a retail site you could do offers of the week, and use opt in email lists to promote these to visitors. If you have an information site this may be a bit more difficult.
Tools provided by your hosting company
There are some very good tools around which will make your website more interesting. Some should be included in your web hosting package and will include a guestbook and forum. A guestbook is useful for people to give you an indication of whether they like your site or not - but be prepared to remove entries from unscrupulous visitors simply wanting to get free advertising for their own sites (usually completed unrelated!). Forums are useful for self help - you don't need to be an expert on everything, as your visitors will (hopefully) help you out and answer questions themselves!
Other tools
Other tools may be free, or may require a subscription. Options you could include are RSS tickers, event calendars, web polls.
An RSS ticker can either be used to show people what is new on your site (see http://www.limebrook.com for an example), or to bring in a news feed relevant to your site. Many magazines offer this feature free to other sites.
A web poll is useful as it seems to be human nature to want to give an opinion. Putting up a poll on a subject relevant to your site can give you useful information about your visitors as well as making them feel the site is interactive.
Many free tools can be found by doing a Google search, however be aware that nothing is ever really for free. Many good web poll packages work very well, but when giving the results back to your visitor will use it as a way of presenting advertising information to them. You may be very happy with this, but make sure you try it out for yourself first to make sure that it fits in with what you want visitors to your site to be exposed to!
If you want advert free tools you may need to pay. You can spend a very large amount on advert free web polls, but you can also get some at very low cost. Beware of ’14 day free trials’ – nothing wrong in principle, but it is very easy to waste a lot of time setting a web poll up on your site only to suddenly find it will cost you $200 to keep it after the free period! Our advice is if you sign up for any free trial make sure you know how much the subscription will eventually cost you, and only use that tool if you know you are going to be able to afford it in the long run!
A word of warning!
Once you have your website there are unlimited improvements you can make - but be careful they really are improvements and add to your site. As you become more proficient in web designing you may want to add a flash intro to your site, for example, but always put yourself in the position of your visitor. Always remember to think:
1. Who is your target visitor?
2. Why are they coming to your site?
3. What do you want them to focus their attention on?
If you have a long flash intro you may find people go to another site rather than wait to see what is on yours. It may be appropriate for an entertainment site to set out to entertain its visitors from the start - but if you want a middle aged person to buy some widgets, a long introduction, especially with loud music playing, may not make them stick around long enough to find you are the cheapest in the market!
There are a lot of tools out there - just make sure you don't get carried away and use them just to show how clever you have become. Remember, the whole point of your site is to get, and keep, visitors.
Pat Ransom has worked in the IT industry for 15 years and is experienced with local government and company websites. Having designed and published a successful and acclaimed website in her own right the secrets of website design and publishing are now shared at http://www.webmasterproductions.co.uk
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