Of the many add-ons that Unlocked Ideas can bring to your site,several of the most widely useful are described here. They are: opt-in mailing lists, forms to update your site, interactive calendars, discussion forums, web-based e-mail, and rotating images. If you need something else, just ask.
Mailing Lists
One of the fastest growing uses of e-mail for marketing is the opt-in mailing list. Visitors to your site can subscribe themselves to receive your newsletter or other e-mails you send. You can also put all your customers on a mailing list and give them instructions to remove themselves from the list if they desire. Everything, including sending the message, is web-based and incredibly easy to use. To see such a list in action, sign up for my mailing list.
Updating
Don't frustrate yourself and your users by having old content on your site. A main reason content on some sites never changes is no one in the organization knows how to change it. Using our update feature, you will no longer need to rely on anyone but yourself for updating key web content. Try our demonstration of how update features can be programmed into your web site.
Interactive Calendars
If your organization has events that your visitors want to keep track of, an interactive calendar is perfect. Site visitors can quickly get an overview of the month. They can look at future or past months. When they want to read further about an event, it is a click away. For the site owner, an interactive calendar is extremely easy to update through a password protected form. We can give you a calendar where the site content is controlled by the site administrator or where visitors can post events.
Discussion Forums
We can provide you a bulletin board-style discussion forum to allow your users to discuss issues or ideas relevant to your site. One advantage of these systems is that it immediately increases the time visitors stay at your site. You determine the categories of discussion for your users, then they register to be able to post their comments and participate in the dialogue on your site. Sites selling advertising can easily increase income using discussion forums. Unlocked Ideas does not have a discussion forum on its site because traffic is not high enough to support a good example of this feature.
Web-based E-mail
Unlocked Ideas can establish two types of web-based e-mail programs for your organization. One type allows you and your staff to send and receive e-mails using the same POP e-mail account that you normally access from your main computer. When you are away from the office, you can still have access to this e-mail account as if you were at your desk, which is especially helpful if you travel frequently. Another type of web-based e-mail is intended for users outside your organization. You can provide a service similar to Hotmail that lets site visitors set up visitor@yourcompany.com e-mail addresses that they access by visiting your site. Such an e-mail program will give you an income from banner advertisements.
Rotating Pictures
Even if you don't have time or content to change your site, your visitors can still have a fresh experience. Unlocked Ideas can install a collection of images to display on your web page in random order each time your visitor returns to the page. Click for a demonstration of this feature.
The variety of enhancements we can bring to your web site is limited only by the combination of our imaginations and yours. These and other site enhancements use PERL to program miniature applications that are executed on the web server to allow for interactive pages.