Create living websites!
Many businesses have dying websites. Though it is a grave concern, the frequent updation of their websites is either too tedious or too costly. Most of it is because when they set out to create a website, they didn’t have any long term plan in mind. Anyways, here are a few pointers that can help you create websites that breathe, interact and earn for you! Since you might not make your own website, you can still get better results if you are aware of what you can get.
1. Plan ahead: Do not go contented for simple HTML websites with state-of-the-art graphics. Always get an admin interface created. Ask your web designer to enable you to add/edit some part of the text and some of the images via an interface. If it costs a little more, it’s an investment. Try tossing terms like content management, wordpress/joomla to sound IT-aware.
2. Feeds: Your website should get regular updates from your blogs, tweets, facebook - as you may like. This makes the website quite alive.
3. Gadgets: Add a few dynamic widgets like visits counter, quote of the day(if relevant), Quick-polls, Weather, news and many others or you may even build a custom gadget.
4. Contacts: Always add a section/page to enlist all the contact details. All the ways in which you will like your visitors to connect with you (includes Twitter, Facebook) Address, emails, phone-numbers, fax. You may also provide a facility where visitor can make you VOIP call, or leave a message. You may include live chats, so that visitors can contact you directly when you or someone in your team is online.
5. Security: All the places where you may have to display emails, or where you expect the user to fill a form are susceptible to spam attacks. Ensure mail-hiding and captcha.
