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Help Your Site Keep Itself Current!

Nothing kills site traffic like visitor boredom. Ensure repeat visits by presenting constant change on the home page. Features as simple as randomly-changing photos or as complex as daily news updates are easy to produce and provide continuous visitor interest.

Tools for changing pages dynamically include Active Server Pages code (ASP), Javascript, and external information feeds. Once set up, variety can be maintained without any programming skill and with only occasional maintenance.

Create an ever-changing scene

Photos, quotes, products, and sale specials lend themselves particularly well to this treatment. Selected features can be generated randomly or scheduled to appear on specific days.

Cholo's Sports Cards shows a sampling of products that changes each time the home page is entered or refreshed. ASP code randomly selects products from the shopping cart database, extracts an image name from the product record, and displays that image. The only maintenance required of the store owner is routine database updating to keep product information current.

Plaid Beanies uses a similar technique to highlight just its latest products. Photos of the latest products are kept evenly divided between three special image folders that contain only the latest Beanies. Each time the home page is entered or refreshed, ASP code randomly selects one photo from each folder to display.

If a specific sale item or other feature for a particular day or week would better suit your objectives, use Javascript to display it on a designated schedule.

Visitors in search of inspiration, education, and entertainment make daily visits to Leadership Solutions for their Quote of the Day, to Dictionary.com to learn the Word of the Day, and to Dilbert.com for the latest in corporate humor. What short bit of interest would motivate your target market to click on your URL each day?

Provide up-to-date news and information

Web surfers love targeted news and information. Fortunately it is not easy to provide your visitors with the latest on their areas of interest by adding a news feed to your home page. News feed providers will give you free access to timely information from credible sources.

Check out the variety of news topics available from content providers like iSyndicate.com and Moreover. Find other news providers on specific topics by using your favorite search engine to search for "news feed".

Current weather information is relevant to many sites. Consider adding a "weather sticker" from Weather Underground or Weather.com. Al Nichols Engineering uses one to help visitors understand the real story of weather in Tucson.

Surfing the web in topic areas unrelated to yours will help you find other ways that crafty web site owners lure in visitors with fresh information.

Copyright © 2001 Mary Ann Chapman
Previously published in edited form by Workz.com

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