What can your website do for you?
Aside from the usual function to display information to your customers, your site can work much harder for you and your business.
Carefully chosen web site functions can have a big impact on your customer experience and on your business.
I've put together some working examples of the features & functions you might want on your web site (box at right) to help you target a specific objective or goal in your business and/or to meet the needs of your clients.
These are are just examples or demonstration of selected functions. They can be modifed in many different ways to meet your needs or requirements. They also can be styled to match any site design you may wish.
Search
The search box found on each page of this site, will produce a list of pages that contain the words entered by the site visitor. You can show the results on the separate page, as I have, or you can inlcude a dynamic drop down of search results that displays on the same page as the search box.
Email Form
Having an integrated email form on your site gives it a level of professionalism and sophistication. Simply having an e-mail link assumes your customers have their own email program. If they are not on their own computer this may not be true. Worse, the spammers love to scan websites for email addresses so they can flood you with their junk
The contact page of this site is an example of a contact form that will send emails to you, or others that you specify. You can incorporate a pull down list or check box so users can direct their note to specific people or departments. There is an anti-spam option and you can even include a file attachment option.
Photo Gallery
Photo galleries come in many shapes, sizes and formats. They can be static images on a page or more interactive with thumbnails or slide shows.
News / Articles
The articles section of this site illustrates how you can write articles and have them summarized on one page. You can specify how much information is displayed for each article and how it is sorted. You can also add categories or other relevant information such as publish date, author, etc.
Discussion / Customer Comments / Blog
For those with lots to say, a blog can be a daily, weekly or regular communication from you to your customers. You can also ask your customers to share their thoughts & ideas with you on a discussion page. This can be a guest book style or attached to specific articles on your site. You can choose to moderate them--review prior to publication. If you're brave, visitor comments can be completely unmoderate--published instantly.
Product Catalog
The featured clients section of this site is an example of a product catalog. I've included an image of my product (a website) along with selected data elements and a short description.
I've chosen to display each product in a single column but you can also have them organized a grid or column structure. You can specify any number of data elements, such as price or product numbers, you can use one or more image on the summary and you can use larger or smaller images in the summary.
In this case the product name will link to a full page dedicated to that particular product that includes a larger image and more information abou the product. You could even add a photo gallery or a discussion feature on each page.
FAQ / User Tips / Tutorials
This can be done in a variety of ways. One way is to treat them as articles as I've done on this site. This is a good format for tutorials that may be lengthy. For short quick answers, you might use a single document of straight text just like you might make in any word processor. Another option might be using a collapsable accordian affect like I've used on my services page.