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Interactive Web Sites
Offer your website's visitors a fast-paced, interactive experience by including dynamic elements in your site. For example, your site's visitors can leave messages, responses, or product reviews for you or for each other. Your site may display different content depending on context or user input. A single page may display several different types of content in response to user actions or depending on certain variables. This is what it means to be dynamic: Your website is fully configurable!
One of the things that make Internet technology such a revolutionary form of mass communication is its potential for interactivity.
There are two basic types of interactive web modules: the kind where users can post or send a message to interact with your business or with other web users; and the kind where users interact with components of the web page itself. Something complicated like a checkout procedure for a customized product may involve both types.
Websites can be programmed to respond differently depending on user requests. Page content can be generated dynamically based on user actions, based on information retrieved from a database or from another web server. Often this data exchange takes place via XML, which in turn may be dynamically generated as a result of user actions. Page content may also be determined by user input from a previous page, and the site's appearance may be personalized, with the layout and colors modified based on stored preferences. For example, many popular content provider and social networking sites allow logged-in users to customize their page layout and display preferences.
Other examples of interactive applications include:
- Simple contact functionality allowing users to send a message to you -or to their friends- from your website
- Interactive blog functionality - lightweight content management software which makes it easy for anyone to write and post new pages to a website and to optionally allow the site's visitors to leave comments.
- Interactive purchasing: The internet offers an endlessly evolving variety of ways for you to make money selling your products online. Your customers could enter their exact desired specifications and place orders for custom products; or possibly you would like them to be able to leave product reviews that you can moderate. Interactive commercial websites allow for personalized login functions, dynamic store pages, and interactive web displays, as well as video and a number of creative ways of displaying multiple views of a product.
- Interactive Flash objects for rich media and enhanced navigation
- User Feedback: Product ratings and reviews
- Discussion forums and social networking sites
