Interactivity can help attract repeat visitors to your web site and encourage them to use it for longer periods of time. In some cases, this can add to the content it has to offer. Here are some tips for increasing the interactivity of your site…

POLLS: Offering a poll related to the web site (or particular content on it) increases interactivity and encourages users to return later and check the results. Visitors may even tell other people to vote on the poll if it is about a controversial issue.

RATINGS: Allow users to rate images, articles, links, videos, or other content using star icons or a drop-down menu. This doesn’t add a great deal of interactivity, but is easy to maintain and less likely to be misused.

COMMENTS: Letting visitors to your site post comments about content on it will encourage them to discuss relevant issues and return later to respond to others’ comments. However, this sort of interactivity can pose some problems, like “spamming” and X-rated comments.

CLASSIFIEDS: Creating a classified advertising section for users to post items related to your web site’s topic adds a useful feature and is effective for increasing interactivity.

SEARCH: Providing a feature for searching your web site’s content can be helpful for its visitors. On the other hand, a poorly-designed, ineffective search function may cause them to leave more quickly.

CHAT: Offering a real-time chat system for users is an effective method of increasing interactivity if your site is fairly popular. It can be used for discussion of an issue, or for answering questions about your product or service.

CUSTOMIZATION: Using cookies and/or registration data to provide users with information customized for them, such as automatically providing local weather data or content related to their interests, can make your web site more convenient.

TOOLS: Adding interactive tools to your web site, especially if they address a niche interest, can help attract new users. These can include specialized calculators, programming code generators, converters, or automatically generated suggestions/recommendations.

GAMES: Placing free JavaScript or PHP based games on your web site is good for increasing interactivity and gaining repeat visitors. Some sites offer these to webmasters free of charge, usually in exchange for a link.

Basically, features for increasing the interactivity of your web site are likely to improve its popularity and usefulness, but only if they are implemented properly and sufficiently monitored to ensure that they are not being misused.

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