Lesson6 - Ideas for a successful websites

Lesson6 - Ideas for a successful websites


Besides simply designing your web site, what else do you need to do with it?

Your web site is your portal to the world. With the internet breaking new ground everyday as a research and information tool, having a web site is now more important than ever. No matter how small or large your business is you can greatly profit from having a web site. According to the latest statistics, sixty-five percent of Internet users in the US do not shop at a poorly designed site even if it is of their favorite brand.


A well designed web site is not only an attention grabbing site; it is a great promotional and marketing tool as well. Reduced advertising costs alone are worth having a web site. With a web site you can catalog your entire business into a few pages. Pictures, product descriptions, awards won, consumer queries, and even short animation clips can liven up the plainest of web sites.

Your web site is your greatest asset and is a fantastic promotional tool as it represents your company, the way you do business and your products. The best part about having a web site is that it communicates directly with current and prospective clients without any middle man involved.

Your web site can have a numbers of advantages including:

* Unlimited hours of business operation
* Reduced overhead costs
* Up-to-date information availability
* The potential for a large customer base
* Online sales of products

Web site Add-ons

Besides just simply designing your web site, you can also need to make your site more dynamic and interactive. This can be done by adding web site add-ons. Web site add-ons not only help to improve the look and feel of your web site but they also help provide something to keep visitors to your site interested and coming back for more. They make your web site come alive with animation, interactive functions and fun features.

Basically web site add-ons are web applications that offer interactive features and database-generated content. They are easily customized according to the needs of your site and can be simply integrated giving your web site a different look and feel. A plus point about web site add-ons is that they do not require you to change your existing web hosting arrangement, and no software is required to install them. Your add-ons can be linked and activated within no time at all.

Some of the more popular web site add-ons include:

* Flash animations
* interactive games
* pictures
* photograph slide shows
* bulletin boards and forums, where visitors can post messages, ask questions and get answers
* chat rooms where you can interact with your customers and get direct personal feedback
* your own site search engine, to let visitors find useful information easily without having to look all over the site for it
* a guestbook where visitors can sign in
* a free subscription newsletter service
* classified ads
* a links page, from where guests can visit other similar sites like yours
* a calendar that not only let you plan holidays, meetings, and events but also keeps track of community events and national holidays
* surveys and polls from which you can get highly useful feedback from your visitors and measure their opinions of your site
* Counters that help to keep track of your web site traffic and also provide detailed site statistics
* Shopping Carts. This add-on is meant for ecommerce sites where visitors can purchase products and services on your web site. This program automatically calculates the total sales tax, and shipping charges of the items purchased.