| |
|
|
| Webmaster Resources: Web Design Information | |
|
|
|
Website Polls For You And Your Visitors
Setting up a survey on your site is extremely simple and many times just as beneficial, for two main reasons. One, they let you create a more interactive website for your visitor. Choose interesting topics, poll opinions on recent events related to your site, and people will participate to find out what other people on your site think. Second, if you write your surveys in a way that keeps them interesting and useful to yourself you can gather important information about your visitors in order to build a site better tailored to their interests. STEP 1: Set Up The Software You'll need to either sign up for a remotely hosted poll service or to install a CGI script on your own in order to manage your polls. While a remotely hosted poll is not as customizable as one you host on your own, it's definitely easier to set up. One of the more popular of the many free remotely hosted poll services out there is PollIt. You can have your poll up and running fast after registering and filling out a couple forms: http://www.pollit.com/webpolls The other option is to find or write a CGI script to run the poll on your site. This gives you the ability to customize the poll to look exactly as you want it and to fit in with your site. It also eliminates the links back to the poll host that many remotely hosted ones have. You can find a good one here: http://www.cgi-world.com/pollit.html STEP 2: Write Your Question The goal of your poll is to create a more interactive website for your visitors and to collect information for yourself. Choose topics where responses would interest both the visitor to your site and yourself. Ask a question about the topics your site covers to find out what your visitors want more information about. You may even ask questions directly related to your website. Ask "what do you want to read more of" and list several topics your site covers or may cover in the future. Ask "how often do you read our daily gardening tips" and find out exactly how popular they are.. or aren't. STEP 3: Post Your Poll Placement is key! You won't get a heaping response to your poll unless it's very well written. Place the poll towards the top of the page where it will be visible when the page loads. While some of the remotely hosted services offer polls that pop up when the page loads, these will generally get less response than one integrated into your site well. With CGI-based polls, you can usually use SSI or Server-Side-Includes to include your poll right in your webpage without doing much editing. Do a search at any major search engine for more information on this. STEP 4: Use Your Results Once you've acquired enough votes to get an idea of what your visitors are voting overall, use this information to improve your site. Build your site based on what your visitors really want to see. If they tell you they want to learn about topics over other topics, focus more on the ones they're interested in. Hopefully this will lead to a more successful site for you in the long run. Your users will benefit from a more interactive site and a responsive website owner who tailors the site to their wants and needs. About The Author Dan Grossman runs http://www.websitegoodies.com where you can find over 250 hand-picked resources, articles, and tools! Dan also publishes the free weekly "WebDevPortal" newsletter for website owners! Subscribe today and get articles like this every week: subscribe@websitegoodies.com?subject=article-subscribe
Add to these social bookmarking sites: 
MORE RESOURCES:
Google News |
|
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
How Your Business Can Win Online There are lots of websites out there that do little to encourage their customers to stick around or buy their products from them. In this article i'm going to show you a typical example of where a small company has gone wrong with its website. Some File Naming Tricks for Your Online Home Based Business Web Pages Conventional Wisdom states you should use Sub-Directories to organize your web Pages. Unfortunately the Page Indexing Tools Penalize your Page Rankings when you Do this, Many of the Page Ranking Algorithms in use today deem that pages closed to your Root are of a Higher Value then pages that are further away from your root. Effective Website Design For Massive Traffic STEP 1:Do your homeworkPlan and think about your content. Think big, have a vision of at least a 100 page site. How To Choose A Website Designer When you're self-employed, choosing a website designer is a crucial decision, as a good website can bring you more business and a bad one can drive away prospective customers. Below are some important things to consider when selecting a website designer for your new site or site redesign. Cool Web Design And Promotion Tips This article gives free tips on how to find a cheap website designer and free tips on website promotion services.Cheap website design services. Do You Want To Save Time With Your Web Design? It starts off simply; a few HTML pages, a few hyperlinks, some affiliate links. Your mother is proud of her clever son. Meta Tags - An Introduction A long, long time ago? In a galaxy far, far away?meta tags were the key component to search engine rankings. Okay, it was about 2 years ago, but that's a long time in the Internet galaxy. No More Jargon! Pamper Your Audience! When your company built its website, did you think about the content (the text) of your site? Did you write it for your customers? The answer to these questions is often 'No.'The first mistake most companies make when filling their website with content is overlooking who they're writing for. Speed Up Or Lose Out! How To Improve Your Websites Download Speed So your web site's online and you've got high rankings in the search engines attracting lots of visitors. But the statistics tell you most of them are leaving after viewing just one page, what's gone wrong?One possible cause could be a slow download speed of your web site's homepage or the web site as a whole. Why is a Logo so Important to Your Business? Well, a logo for your business. Why is it important? Does it matter what it looks like? Is Yours Professional?These are some good questions to ask when you are considering to get a logo design or already have a logo for your business. Flash - To Use Or Not To Use? Out there in the WWW there are thousands sites using flash for their needs. But the majority sites are not in this list. Website Advertising: 10 Dynamic Tactics To Super-Charge Your Sales Here are 10 dynamic website advertising tactics to super-charge your sales, starting now:1. Test different web site color themes to see which combination will sell your product better. One-Product Sales Sites: Avoid These Top Blunders One product, one long web page: this kind of web site is sometimes called a sales letter site or mini-site, and it focuses on one and only one goal, as many sales of that one product as possible. With a one-product sales site, no distractions, no subsidiary goals, such as newsletter signups, are allowed to interfere with that goal. Having A User Friendly Website Let's look at what your user wants to see at your website.1. Awards Program Debate Daily article:One of the most debated subject among webmasters is the whole concept of web site awards. I'm sure you've seen the little graphics on many different sites, announcing it is the "best", "coolest" or "most wonderful" or whatever. Developing Your Winning Web Site Strategy Your web site is the key to your success on the Internet. You can use your web site to build your brand, increase sales, generate more leads, slash costs, and much more. Immutable Laws Of Effective Navigation - Part 1 The first immutable law of effective navigation: It's gotta be readily available.Visitors should not have to hunt for your navigation or wonder where to find it. Website Design Basic Concepts So, what's in a website design anyway? And, how do you get a design that is appealing to the broad and varied tastes of all those Internet surfers out there?This is critical. Your website design is the first impression you make on your customers and visitors. Web Design - 7 Key Things to Avoid A search for "web design" on Google returns more than 325 million results. So how do we start eliminating all these so called designers? Here are a few of the most common shortcomings. Online Businesses Still Ignoring Dial-up Market In this article you will find the parallel between two Internet connections that makes serious actions trough financial market, leading this to great profits or huge losses.The first type of connection that it will be detailed is Dial-up connection.
|
| Home | Site Map |
|
| © 2006 | |
