Learning about the visitors to your site is key and by asking them some questions about themselves and their interests is a good way to get data. You'd be surprised at how willing people are to tell you all about themselves.

People LOVE to know who they are, what's important to them, how they compare, etc. Examples would be personality profiles, aptitude tests, situational quizzes, etc. These can be a lot of fun to create and try, and can be made so that they are timeless.

Invite your visitors to add information and content to your site, to be viewable by others. Often times this takes place in the form of a discussion forum or similar place where people can post messages.

Many search engines will not be able to follow the navigation link if it is embedded in a script. This can shut-off whole sections of your site from the search engines, rendering your important descriptive pages un-indexable. We have seen some sites containing 100 or more pages where only the index page could be crawled by the search engines.

The simple solution is to create duplicate links from your home page to all key content pages of your site, using hidden navigation if you prefer. Also. cross-link your content pages one to another, this will give you a better chance of having more pages indexed.

By setting up web-based forums, message boards, chat rooms and other topic/market-specific features, you'll be creating virtual communities of visitors with similar interests. Given everyone is hungering for a sense of community in their lives, these virtual communities are a natural.

Giving visitors something to sign up for when at your site turns your site into something interactive! Plus, this way, you can keep coming to them versus you relying on them to come back to you.

Have your web site visitors perform a series of step by step tasks and have them learn a skill in doing so.