Web surfers like to push buttons. Make certain, when designing
your site, to break it up into several smaller pages that link to
each other. This gives the illusion that your site is larger
than if the same information was all on a single page. In today's
information age society. People desire to find specific information
and they want it now. Give them a button to click that
will give them the information that they seek without having to
fish through your site to find it.
LINK TO LIKE INFORMATION
Put links to like information within your site. (I know this
sounds like a contradiction... you've spent a lot of energy
trying to get this person to your site... "now you want me to send
him away?") As an example, let's say that you make
coffee cups and have made a site that features your cups. Have a
page that links to other cup manufacturers, coffee and bean
distributors, coffee tables, coffee-flavored candy... Visitors
to your site will return because you have the best resources, all
in one spot. Keep your target audience coming back.
COMPEL THEM TO MAKE CONTACT
Attempt to include some contact by visitors to your site.
Using the previous example of a coffee cup site, you could have
a questionaire, "What's your favorite coffee?"
a coffee trivia game or maybe, "Guess what this cup is made
of and win a free mini-cup" (you get the idea). Basically,
compel them to take action in your site. This helps develop a
relationship between you and your visitors, who would
have had only a passive experience with your site otherwise.
WHERE THE RUBBER HITS THE ROAD
This is the most important and most neglected aspect of
web site building, especially if the site is to be designed to
generate revenue of any kind. You must get your visitors clicking
towards the ORDER button.
It can take approximately three months of experimenting
and monitoring all the visitors use of a site to tweak the interactivity
in such a way as to gravitate the visitor toward actually spending
their hard-earned cash.
(I sometimes will hire interactive game programmers to
assist me in this phase of the commercial web site development.)
BE PARTICULAR
Lots of webmasters put things into their pages to try to
create interactivity. Be particular about what you have to entertain
your visitors. Putting in games like Tic Tac Toe, Hangman,
Matching Games, etc... are a waste of your visitor's attention.
Unless of course you can make the game represent the theme of
your site, i.e., a coffee-themed crossword puzzle.
EXAMPLE
Here's and example of a company who provides
Free Web Sites. These are of particular interest because they have built-in interactivity. These people know what works.
Check it out and maybe use some of the features to enhance your own web site.
