Modules for your Website

April 28, 2007

In my post earlier this week, Five Ideas for "Keeping It Fresh", I discussed using updatable content to attract and retain website traffic. In this post, I will discuss a few modules that you can add to your website to keep your content current and create interactivity on your site.

Here at NHG Consulting, we design websites according to the principles of a base site and add-on modules. That is, your base site is your brochure site - the 5-10 pages that summarizes your company and your offerings. What you add on top of that is really up to you, and usually dictated by your marketing goals and the needs of your clients. The add-on modules I am going to discuss today are (in no particular order): newsletters, blogs, events calendars, forums, and feeds.

Newsletters

A newsletter is just a classic way to get people to sign up for your mailing list. It can arrive in many forms - a standard newsletter, product announcements or sales, some kind of club or membership, a coupon reward - but the basic idea is this: you have a form on your website where customers can sign up to opt-in to your list and receive announcements from you. I don’t have room in this post for every aspect of newsletter marketing, so I will just touch on the biggest one - you must only send to those people who have opted-in to your list, and you have to provide them with a way to opt-out if they choose to do so. (These rules keep you in compliance with anti-spam laws.) The benefit of a newsletter for you is to create a list of people who are interested in buying your product, through which you can market current or existing products to later on. Remember to thank your subscribers for signing up for your list by sending them condensed and valuable content in your newsletter.

Blogs

Blogs are really just a form of content management. What they allow the website owner to do is update a site without knowledge of programming code or backend technology. Essentially, a blog is set up using a generic template or a custom theme (such as the one we used on the Pursue the Passion: The Interviews blog), and then the site owner can easily add and modify the content through the use of web-based forms. This allows the site owner to quickly make changes and additions to the site - thereby providing fresh content that is attractive to both visitors and the Googlebot.

For further information on blogs, please see these two articles: What’s the deal with blogging? and Do I need a blog?.

Events Calendars

An events calendar encourages your visitors to meet you in person or see your product live, in action. It also connects you to the events you may be attending. For example, if you are attending the state fair and list this on your calendar, someone planning to visit the state fair and searching Google for the state fair might come across your listing and decide to visit your booth while they are there. It also shows you are an active company with ongoing community marketing campaigns. If your events calendars announces new releases of your product, you can help create some anticipatory buzz before the release date. If the bulk of your product happens at events - for example, you are a music band or a craft artisan that works at festivals - then an events calendar is a must to bring in new customers and let return customers find you.

Forums

Forums are simply a place for your visitors to engage in dialogue with you and/or other users of your product. You can use them to discuss related topics, new or uncommon uses for your products, faq and support issues, etc. Forums can be both moderated and unmoderated - there are pros and cons of each in terms of time commitment and content issues. There are many opensource forum software packages that you can install for free, and that can be fully customized to match your site and meet your needs. Forums allow your content to be created for you and often bring the Googlebot back regularly. For your visitors, forums allow them to find quick answers and chat on similar topics with their peers.

Feeds

An example of a imbedded feed can be found on the right side of the front page of our company website. Another example can be found on the Horoscope Page at YourSoothsayer.com. While these two functions are written in different programming languages, they serve the same purpose - they parse an RSS feed from another site and display that content on your website. The benefit of this function to your customers is that they can view related information that is hand-selected by you - this is added value to your website. The benefit for you is to boost your Google status and provide continually updating content for your site. The benefit for the content provider is that you are doing their marketing for them by crediting them for the content and linking back to their site. (Proper credit and backlinks is always a must!) It’s a win-win for everyone involved.

To learn more about RSS Feeds, please see our article Save Time with Subscriptions.

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