Trick or Treat!

by Heather Champ

Finding ways to bring traffic to your site needn't be scary. Designers are continually developing interesting content to ensure repeat traffic. A number of top-flight design firms have sites that for all intents and purposes function as research and design forums where they can pursue ideas to their hearts content without submitting to the will of hard-headed clients.

Razorfish's Blue Dot and Avalanche's BORDER = 0 are wonderful examples of sites with sometimes bizarre, silly, or strange explorations that invariably lead the user to question his or her understanding of the Web.

I think of these sites or elements within a site as small (sometimes large) Web hacks. They are a great way to pursue all those truly interesting ideas that seem to get cut in the first round of development. They can also refresh a designer who's working on a large ongoing project and needs a brief respite. Many times you will discover interesting ways of resolving issues in other projects while ending up with a small gem for your portfolio.

Boo

An idea for content popped up in my mailbox a couple of weeks ago.

"If anybody is working on a cool Halloween Site, Lycos is creating a "Halloween Hot list." Submit those haunted URLs to..."

"To qualify, the sites had to be creative and fun, in the light-hearted spirit of Halloween. In addition, they had to download quickly. While none of these sites contains any X-rated or extremely violent material, not all of them are appropriate for younger surfers. . . . No one will hand out candy as you go from site to site on the Net, but there is still plenty of fun to be found. As with the World-Wide Web, there are a fair amount of lesser quality sites mixed in with the truly creative. To assist you in your Internet trick-or-treating, the staff at AlphaSelect, an Internet information service, has surfed ahead and found ten top-notch Halloween sites on the Internet".

Halloween is not the only "holiday" possibility, Valentines and Christmas among others have also been celebrated online.

What to Consider

• Planning ahead of time is the key. Although the Web is more immediate than print, sites like Lycos start looking early to create a list of sites worthy for surfers. AlphaSelect chose only 10--Booville, Gint House, Cyberfright, The Ghost Hunters Gallery, Midlink Magazine's Virtual Haunted House, The Stereographic Graveyard, Vampyres Only, Virtual Jack-O-Lantern, Halloween stuff, Horror Audio Archive --they felt worthy of a visit, which is no small feat.

  Even though it's too early to start your holiday shopping, it's never too early to begin to think about developing a holiday site. A search on Alta Vista for "Advent Calendar" returned approximately 200 possibilities. Metaviolet's Advent Calendar and Penny Schenk's Papa Bear's Web Advent Calendar are charming. But given that an advent calendar traditionally begins on December 1, time is very much a factor.

• Your content should be interesting and unique. If you are thinking of creating a seasonal offering, do a bit of surfing to see what others have done. Search engines will offer up numerous sites. There are many ways to create intriguing sites without relying on the very latest technology.
• Even though I've mentioned more traditional holidays, you might want to consider something with a twist. A couple of years ago I created a combination Beware the Ides of March/Happy St. Patrick's day greeting combo in the pre-Netscape 1.1 days, so it's rather static. I should go back and GIF animate the image. If your idea is truly unique you have a better chance of creating a buzz and word of mouth or, rather, e-mail traffic.
• Shameless self-promotion is the order of the day. Create a press release and e-mail it to friends and Web sites, large and small. A URL alone can be a rather bald statement, so be clear and informative with enough information to entice the user to come and visit, but don't give away the game.

Past installments of Design Diary