Site Visitor Interaction

Ten years ago it was acceptable and impressive for a business to have the equivalent of a digital business card or brochure on the Web. That is no longer impressive today though for many still, it is all they feel comfortable undertaking to produce. But interacting with one's visitors is obviously critical.

I loosely define "site visitor interaction" as any function or feature on a web site that permits and encourages the visitor to interact with the site owner. This definition can be extended to any function that allows a site visitor to inform another individual that may not know about the site or any feature that allows information on the site to change depending upon the visitor's input or preferences.

The E-mail link vs. a contact form

In the most simplistic form, this would be an e-mail link. Most sites have at least an e-mail link but there is a problem with the standard way in which this is done:

This Code:  Contact <A HREF ="mailto:me@mysite.com"> Me </A>

Yields This:  Contact Me

So what's wrong with that? It works doesn't it? Yes it does, but it leaves you open to having every spam robot grabbing your e-mail address. This is becoming a serious nuisance even if you do use software to protect your computer against viruses. Of course this is something a PC user cannot afford to neglect if they are going to interact with people via the internet. Most important though, the simple mailto link does not allow you to keep track of the visitor's inquiry in a structured manner or ask them any questions that they might be happy to answer while submitting a simple form instead. If you run a Bead & Breakfast, you might want to ask them if they are new visitors to your site (with yes and no radio buttons) along with how they found your site (with a pop-up list that has appropriate options). As long as you do not ask questions that make the user feel like you are getting too personal (like "what is your income"), people will not object to answering a few quick questions while they submit their inquiry. Over time, this information can be reviewed to yield important clues about how to better promote and enhance your web site.

Before considering the alternatives to the simple mailto link, it is important to note that such a link is often useful. If you do want to retain mailto links, be sure to use Javascript (or some other method) to scamble your address in such a way that spam robots will find it harder to capture from the pages. For Dreamweaver users there are several free "behaviors" that will do this without needing to know how to program Javascript. They can be found in Macromedia's Dreamweaver Exchange. You can also checkout DMX Zone and see what they have for this.

If you have access to installing Perl scripts (a CGI directory) on your site, a very simple but most capable and free form mail script is "FormMail" by Matt Wright, A variation of that script is also available that keeps a simple text file on the server with all of the submissions received using the script (the fields to keep are up to you). That text file can be grabbed from the server every so often and the data imported to a database or spreadsheet program for tabulating relevant statistics. Be sure to look around since the original Matt's script is rather old now and others have updated it for better security. There are also various PHP and ASP scripts that perform the same functions ... simply do a Google search on "Formmail Script" to find many options.

When setting up a contact form which will also collect visitor information, be sure to make the default answer separate from a real answer! Say you ask if this is the visitor's first time on the site; make it such that the form would submit something besides Yes or No if the person does not answer the question (like "please select"). This is very important! Otherwise, you will get skewed information if the default answer is "yes" but it appears in submission even if the user did not select it. With most capable formmail scripts it is fairly simple to require any field to contain appropriate data when submitted but some questions are best answered voluntarily. It is very annoying to fill in a form only to be taken back to answer marketing info that you opted not to answer in the first place. It is typical that the email field be required and that it be validated by the script to insure against an obvious typo.

To link or Not to link

In the youthful days of the World Wide Web providing links to other sites was simply accepted as a "reason for being". As the web has evolved to a business medium there is a reasonable concern for losing ones visitors to "off-site" links. But, a link exchange remains a viable grass-roots marketing tool and is still appropriate for many sites.

I will state up front that I do not support the practice of putting other sites within a frameset belonging to your site. Not only does it infer a degree of ownership of someone else's property but the reverse may also be true. You may not want to appear responsible for the content on any other particular site. It is more straight forward to simply open an off-site link in a new window and know that your site will still be there if the visitor wants to return.

Regarding links pages, here is a major problem. They can require a lot of time to build and maintain. And, since you are hoping that other sites will link back to you in a positive manner, how do you make it advantageous for them to do so without tending towards an affiliate program? You can join a "service" that rotate banners and/or links among its members but you then have no real control over who is essentially advertising on your site and pulsating banners in garish colors are likely to appear that link to sites having no relationship to your visitor's interests.

For the positive aspects of a working link exchange, your site's search performance can definitely be enhanced by having other sites (who are listed in search engines) link to your site. And, there should be a perceived value to your visitors in the links that are available on your site. If there is, your site is more likely be bookmarked and revisited for that reason.

It is a difficult balance that is swayed to the positive by the use of a CGI script that can both automate the linking process and that rewards the sites that do link to you and sends visitors. A script produced by Smart CGIs called Intellilink has features making it worthy of serious consideration if you want to establish your own link exchange program. There are many features and they are best reviewed on the developers own web site but a few important items are:

• Link exchange members can sign up and add/modify their own links.

• Admin capabilities allow the listings to be controlled and supervised.

• Sites in the listing can be categorized

• Sites that send the most visitors can be rewarded by providing them a more prominent display in return

Overall the "site interactivity" here is very simple; your visitors can be exposed to other sites they may have interest in and look to your site as a resource in addition to whatever you offer as primary content. The ability to provide a "data source" to your visitors that can be largely self maintaining offers tremendous possibilities.