Create a website and make it standout from the crowd

Almost everyone has a website setup nowadays, from company websites to small personal hobbyist sites who are eager to show the world about their latest happenings or their comments on various topics. While this is very commendable, at the same time it presents a common problem for almost all webmasters: making the website stand out from the crowd, having a site that attracts visitors to spend more than a cursory moment before the hit the "Back" button in the browser.

The problem is usually twofold: getting people to the website and making them stay long enough for us to convey them our message or make them purchase our product. The first part is usually easy: using on-site or off-site SEO, webmasters have reached the level of a Ph.D. in website optimization to bring targeted visitors to their site. The second part is the one that still causes lots of problems to many.

People are aware that having relevant content on their web pages is no longer enough. The bounce rate for many websites is still extremely high. Visitors like to have something engaging and entertaining to look at. After all we are living in the age of multimedia and high entertainment. Even online news is no longer just news headlines and reports, the online media knows that adding illustrative images, sounds and videos to their pages, making them interactive is all that keeps their readers on their sites.

Yet there are still plenty of pages out there that are sadly boring at best to look at. People don't have the necessary skills to make their sites interactive and interesting. Most webmasters are still struggling with basic html and CSS.

What they don't know is that with using only some of the software on the market, most webmasters could create a truly gorgeous and professionally designed website, without having to know any web coding whatsoever!

So let's see some of the website add-ons that webmasters could use to improve their web site to increase the website's stickiness, so to keep visitors on website longer, who will want to come back for more.

* Instead of the boring html static template, design a site in Flash with stunning animations and graphics. This is sure to captivate any audience's eyes and ears. There are various software on the market that allow creating such a website without any flash knowledge whatsoever.

* Instead of plain text, have flash streaming videos on your site. Having videos on your website is almost the norm nowadays, and while there are still people who like to read long articles, most of them prefer to click on the Play button and watch the online video. Even Google has recently bought YouTube, as they recognized the importance of multimedia videos on the internet.

* Add clickable interactive maps to your website that gives a new way for your information to be delivered. Having a visual location of your offices lends you more credibility to your buyers. Transparency is everything nowadays. Also using flash interactive maps you can give your visitors a virtual guide to help them to find your location. Plus having a flash, clickable, interactive map is simply cool!

* Have a flash photo gallery to show your visitors, friends and relatives your latest holiday photos. You no longer have to rely on services such as Flickr to upload your images for display on your site.

* Add a website calendar, which will allow people who want to sign up for your various services, trainings and workshops to know exactly the status of the project and the dates that are still free for them to join. If you are a novelist or band on tour, or you are a webmaster for one, a website calendar is a must!

* Offer music on your website as people like to listen to music. With various software available you can customize the appearance of the music player to match your flash website perfectly.

Adding even just one of these website addons to your page will make your site more interactive and attract your visitors to spend more time on your site. You might say though that you don't have the knowledge to code all this, you have no idea how to even get started with it. And I say, you don't have to know coding at all to offer these flash addons to your site. You don't have to touch html while you are busy enhancing your site to make it stand out from the crowd. All you need is the correct software which can do what you want easily and quickly, and you are ready to go.