Want Even More Traffic?

Mashups – alias ad hoc Web sites, bringing information from more than one source together into a common user interface – are starting to happen in a big way. Mashup web portals can be thought of as presentation mashups and are the simplest to build. They involve little real integration, and creating them means simply dragging and dropping widgets or choosing among RSS feeds fitting the focus of the portal or site. Maybe create an additional widget or two, and you’re on the (b)leading edge. To gain physical mastery at creating and maintaining such websites is easy.

Widget creators we have recently used for customers and clients are playlist, goodreads, umapper, blinkx, to name but a few. And most of the resources here are showcased using widgets.

A Mashup will not just save your own time and energy, but also offer your visitors the opportunity to query several sources all at once, and not having to comb through multiple websites, jumping back and forth between search engines and sites. Additionally, mashups representing communities of people offering similar services enables cross-referencing and comparison of services. A major attraction for people seeking such services as your community offers. You get more traffic! For example, creating your goodreads profile allows for entering a url to your website, and maybe attracts more people from the goodreads community to your website. And if you also sell services from a web portal, like tickets to an event, a similar traffic increase can be gained in your payment gateway strategy. For an international community we recommend a strategy using multiple payment schemes: PayPal can be used worldwide and offers a credit card in conjunction with their services. The international aspect.

And, PayPal being a main target for hackers and phishing schemes, we recommend adding local or smaller, other, schemes, to offer your visitors a choice in payment options.

Google Checkout is easy to integrate into websites. If you have a Google account and use AdSense and AdWords, most fees through Checkout are refunded or waived. And Google being a search engine, your ranking goes up some and that generates even more traffic!