We’ve touched on how to make your website more simple and more beautiful. No we turn our attention to making your website more remarkable. Here are 3 things that can do just that.
Let’s Share
There is no doubt about it. Social Media is huge! Facebook and Twitter are constantly listed in the Top 10 most visited websites in the world (http://www.alexa.com/topsites). If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. You can do this by adding a simple way for people to share your website or webpage with their friends.
At the top of this post, you will see a Facebook share button and a Twitter share button. When a reader clicks on this button, a smaller window appears that allows the user to quickly post the Title and URL of this web page to their Facebook or Twitter account. Below this article, there is a “Sharethis” image that you can hover your mouse over and choose from several other sharing services.
These buttons and “widgets” can be found in software plugins (such as in Joomla or WordPress) and can also be found as simple snippets of HTML code that you can copy and paste right into your site. Either way, adding these features can turn your website or web pages into a viral traffic generator, which is truly remarkable!
Save All Comments Until the End
While letting your visitors share your information is pretty remarkable, you can give your readers an even more remarkable experience by letting them create a dialog about your website or web page as well. You’ll notice at the bottom of this page, you will find a “Comments” section that allows readers to post their own thoughts, feelings, ideas and criticism on the same page as the article. This allows for 2 things to happen:
- Readers create a dialog with other readers.
- Readers create a dialog with the writer of the article.
By allowing visitors to comment on your website, you have a created interaction and intrigue. It’s true that it may open your site up to negative feedback, but this is something that should be embraced. As a business, church, school or any other organization, we should accept negative feedback as an opportunity to improve ourselves and reach out to our readers, showing them that we truly care. This allows not only your website to be remarkable, but your organization as well.
I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Searching For
One last feature that you can add to your website to make it truly remarkable is a Search Box. When people want to find something on the Internet, where do they go? They go to search engines. Google, Yahoo and Bing are just a few of the hundreds of search engines that are available online. People type in what they want to find and then they are presented with several places to go and find it.
You can do this with your own website as well. Some web software or content managements systems (such as WordPress or Joomla) have a built in search function that allows visitors to search only that particular website. For example, let’s say that you own an Online Widget Store which has thousands of widgets available for sale. A visitor lands on your site and wants to find the “Widget 2000 X”, but doesn’t know where to click to find it. If there were a search box on the website, they could simple search for “Widget 2000 X” and probably find it within a few seconds, rather than trying to browse through all the pages of widget categories to find it.
For those of you that do not have software or a CMS (content management system) that includes a search feature, Google has actually created a feature called “Google Custom Search” (http://www.google.com/cse/). This will allow you to place a simple search box on your website and then extract the Google search results of certain keywords from your site only. There is a Free version that contains Google Ads, but there is also a paid version that starts at $100/year that contains no ads.
Either way, adding a search box to your site makes it easy for your website visitors to navigate your website and that leads them through a remarkable experience.
What other things have you seen that you thought were remarkable when it comes to website design or features? Please leave your thoughts and ideas in the comment section below.
Mike joined OurChurch.com as Web Designer/Developer in September, 2006. Born and raised in Houston, TX, he is now married and has 3 adorable children. In his spare time he enjoys playing piano/keys and singing throughout the local area as well as at church. You may also see him acting in church dramas as well as a local Improv Comedy Troupe!
4 Comments
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One feature I've been thinking about implementing on our church website is "Chat with the Pastor." It would look a lot like the online support features many websites have, but obviously only be available when I'm online. Not sure this would be "remarkable," but I think it would be an interesting experiment!
I think that would be pretty remarkable. I wonder if you could facilitate that through Facebook chat.
I've been seeing people scheduling virtual "office hours" when you can just stop by, chat, and ask them whatever you want. I've been considering experimenting with that myself on a limited basis, maybe an hour or two a week.
very nice article thank you have been willing to share this very nice article