February 9, 2010 by 11 Comments

How to Create an Interactive Website

If you want to marry someone do you walk up to them and ask “will you marry me”? Obviously not because there is no relationship. You must first start a conversation then slowly build your relationship with successive conversations and by serving them.

The same strategy works in online marketing. Visitors generally don’t buy from the first contact with your website. You need to interact and offer them valuable content so they’ll get to know, like and trust you. Once you’ve won their trust they’ll be more inclined to purchase your goods and services.

Creating an interactive website enables you to interact with your website visitors, build long term relationships, offer valuable content plus recommend your products and services.

How to create an interactive website

One of the quickest and easiest ways is to create a blog. It can be a stand-alone website (domain.com) or add one to your current website (domain.com/blog or blog.domain.com)

Steps for creating stand-alone blog

1. Register a domain

Go to Godaddy.com or your favorite domain name registrar to register a domain name for your business. Include your business name or one of your main keywords in the domain name (e.g drostdesigns.com) so it’s easy to remember and shows what its about.

2. Web Hosting

Find a web hosting service that allows a one click installation of WordPress. WordPress one of the most popular platforms for building an interactive website. Read Top 7 Benefits of WordPress. You’ll need approximately 50MB of disc space to allow room for lots of pages, images and other files and approximately 3GB of bandwidth to support thousands of visitors to your website. Make sure you can easily upgrade your hosting plan should you need more space and bandwidth.

3. Install WordPress

WordPress is the software of choice because it has interactive features already built into it. Some of these features include:

  • Automatic pinging of the search engines
  • RSS feeds
  • Comments
  • Automatic bookmarking of content
  • Automatic newsletter subscriptions
  • Multiple editors of content
  • Blog directories

To install WordPress login to your web hosting control panel (cpanel) and click on the Fantastico icon. Once installed enter the domain name in your browser. The default theme will now be displayed.

4. Select a WordPress theme

I suggest purchasing a professional theme from Studiopress, Thesis or Wpremix so it contains no code errors, is fast loading, search engine friendly and easy to customize. If you prefer a free theme visit: http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/ to select from 100s of themes.

  • Download the new theme to your desktop.
  • Unzip the files. It will create a folder containing the name of your template.
  • Upload this template folder to wp-content-themes folder
  • Use FTP software such as filezilla) for uploading your files to the server
  • Login to your WordPress administration panel, go to the design tab. You should now see your new theme displayed.
  • Activate your new theme by clicking on it with your mouse.
  • Enter your website address in your browser to view your new site.

There are many advanced strategies for customizing the appearance and optimizing your blog for the search engines, however start adding new content to your website immediately by creating new pages and posts.

Related articles
Benefits of an interactive website
Top 10 ways to make your website interactive
How to Optimize Your WordPress Blog

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February 8, 2010 by 7 Comments

How to Make Your Website Interactive – Top 10 Ways

Do you currently interact with your website visitors?
What are the ways to make your website interactive?
How can you keep visitors to stay longer on you site?

Several years ago websites didn’t involve much interaction with visitors. They simply visited the website read the information, purchased a product or subscribed then left. Nowadays visitors want more interaction. This is one of the reasons blogs became so popular. Large offline stores such as BestBuy, Macys etc are now using social media applications.

Top 10 ways to make your website interactive

1. Add a blog

A blog can easily be added to your current website by placing it in a sub domain or a subdirectory. Visitors can interact with your blog by leaving a comment, subscribing to RSS feeds or newsletter.

2. Forum

Forums enable visitors to ask questions and receive answers from people who have similar interests. Sometimes a conversation can start on a thread that continues for weeks. A forum can easily be added to your main site as a sub domain or in a subdirectory.

3. Chat

Chat windows are often seen on ecommerce sites to help the visitor to immediately engage with customer service without leaving the website.

4. Ezine or Newsletter

This helps establish long term relationships with your website visitors. If you offer valuable information by consistently sending out your ezine, weekly or biweekly your customers will get to know, like and trust you. They will be then be more open to your product recommendations.

5 Autoresponders

It’s a general rule that your customer needs to be contacted at least 7 times before they purchase your product. An autoresponder allows you to automatically send email messages every day or every few days. The beauty of this method is that you can set it and forget it.

6. Mini ecourse

Ecourses are like a small tutorial where you send a new lesson every few days using an autoresponder. By educating your customer over time they will be more inclined to purchase your products.

7. YouTube

Not all people like to read text online. Some are visual learners. Adding a video to your website enables visitors to listen and watch your content.

8. Podcast

A podcast is an MP3 file of your content that a person can download from your website. They can listen to it on their computer, download it to their ipod, listen to it in the car or while they’re exercising.

9. Twitter and Facebook

These 2 applications can easily be incorporated into your website so visitors are automatically added to them by clicking on the icons. Whenever you have new content visitors signed up for these sites get instantly notified.

10. Social bookmarking

Social bookmarking enables website visitors to save content to their favorites or recommend it to others. If your article is very popular you’ll experience a huge traffic surge. Add social bookmark icons to your website to make it easy for visitors to bookmark your content.

If you wish to generate more traffic, subscribers and/or make more sales add interactivity to your website by incorporating some of these 10 methods.

Related Articles
Top 7 Benefits of an Interactive Website
7 Factors Affecting Website Performance

Get an Interactive Website Designed
for your business by visiting
Maryland Website Design

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February 5, 2010 by 1 Comment

Interactive Website: Top 7 Benefits

People buy from people they know, like and trust. If you don’t invest in building relationships with your customers they are less likely to do business with you. For example would you hire a contractor recommended by your neighbor or use the phone book to find one? Obviously you would choose your neighbors recommendation because you trust them.

For most websites, people visit the website once or twice then leave. An interactive website enables you to build relationships with your visitors. Instead of only visiting your website once then leaving, you interact with your visitors several times.

Top 7 benefits of an interactive website

1. Build long term relationships

Business people know they need to contact a person several times before they purchase their products or services. It’s easier to sell products to people who have already bought something than finding a new customer. An interactive website enables you to start a conversation with your customer that develops into a relationship.

2. Branding

Every time a visitor interacts with your business online it builds your brand in their minds. For example if they interact with your business on your website, on Twitter, FaceBook, YouTube, in your newsletter and with email, your brand will stand out from your competitors.

3. Become recognized as an expert

Expert status in your niche is gained when people interact with your website, social media applications and read your publications. You become known as the “go to” person in your niche.

4. Build backlinks naturally

If you offer great content and answer peoples’ questions they’ll refer your business to their friends who may then link to your website. Instead of artificially building backlinks you build them naturally by engaging your customers.

5. Increase search engine rankings

One of the most important factors that determine rankings is the number and quality of links you have pointing to your website. An interactive website encourages others to link their website to yours thus increasing your link popularity.

6. Attract web traffic

If your website doesn’t attract traffic your online business will die quickly. It’s the lifeblood of your website. An interactive website attracts and retains traffic because you’re communicating with them. By integrating social bookmarks, Twitter, RSS feeds, YouTube, etc on your website you create multiple methods of interaction and generate traffic from high traffic web properties.

7. Generate more sales

Making a sale is like dating someone. You wouldn’t marry a person that comes up to you and says “marry me.” Dating helps the person get to know, like, trust and eventually love you enough to marry you. You’ll generate more sales by interacting and building a relationship with your visitors.

If you don’t have an interactive website, begin by adding a blog, forum, e-course, or newsletter to it, plus create conversations in your niche using social media applications.

Get an Interactive Website Designed
for your business by visiting
Maryland Website Design

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January 26, 2010 by 1 Comment

Website Redesign: Top 7 Reasons to Get Your Web Pages Redesigned


Is your website looking a little stale and not performing well for you?
Do you want it to look more professional?

If so, it’s time to redesign your website so it will clearly reflect your business image, attract more visitors and generate more sales.

Let’s look at the top 7 reasons to redesign your website

1. Out of date design

If your website was designed several years ago it probably has an old design that no longer appeals to your visitors (or yourself). Even if you get lots of visitors they are not purchasing your products or services. Your website should provide the best experience for first time visitors so they’ll want to do business with you.

2. Out of date content

If the content no longer grabs your visitor’s attention you need to rewrite it. Why not redesign your website while you rewrite the content so your design will harmonize or enhance it.

3. Ineffective navigation

If your visitors can’t quickly and easily access the information they’ll go to your competitor’s site. Your information should be within 3 clicks from the home page. Old navigation menus use images which search engines can’t index. Convert your pages over to a CSS (cascading style sheets) navigation system. It loads fast and is search engine friendly.

4. Slow loading web pages

Google has added loading speed as a rankling factor for the search engines. If your website doesn’t load fast you may not only lose rankings but lose impatient visitors. Some of the factors that affect load times include:

  • flash objects: flash introductions or flash images
  • large images or too many of them on the page
  • code errors: javascript or html errors
  • slow server: not enough space or bandwidth or too many sites on one server
  • multi media: video and audio take up a lot of server resources

5. Not optimized for the search engines

Your web designer may not have designed your web pages to be search engine friendly so they won’t attract much traffic. Many web designers know how to design a website but are not familiar with promotion strategies. When redesigning your website be sure to select a web designer that knows about search engine marketing.

6. Converting static website to content management system (CMS)

If your static html website contains hundreds of pages that need updating you’ll have to edit them one at a time unless you use server side includes files. Many site owners are now using content management system because of these features:

  • separate content creation from design
  • easy to update/add/edit/delete pages from backend administration panel
  • create unlimited pages
  • no html knowledge needed

Two popular CMS editors are WordPress and Joomla. Both are open source and freely available

7. Creating an interactive website

Most static html websites are not built for interaction with your visitors. For example with a CMS such as a blog the visitor can leave comments, subscribe to RSS feeds, create multiple editors to add content, plus a blog automatically alerts the search engines of new content.

If your current website fits any these criteria consider a redesign. You’ll have the opportunity to create an up to date professional design that is search engine friendly, fast loading and attracts more visitors and sales.

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Get a professional website design or redesign
for your online business by visiting:
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Herman Drost is the Certified Internet Webmaster (CIW)
owner and author of http://www.iSiteBuild.com

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