The age of static websites and webpages has long passed, and a new World Wide Web has emerged where users actively interact with websites and contribute to their content. Users have become a very valuable asset and source of credibility in today's web. User-generated content is usually viewed as less biased and more trustworthy, especially when talking about commercial websites and online stores.
The type of web content people look for and enjoy these days is that which has interactive components and features. Rather than reading lengthy text-based pages most people would prefer to watch a video, view photos and infographics, read others' comments and reviews and/or engage in a discussion with other users on a specific topic.
The following are some ideas on how you can have a more engaging and interactive website that would appeal to modern Internet users.
Videos and Photos
Text is boring and takes a significant amount of time to read. Delivering your content in the form of a video or illustrative graphics captures more attention and has proved to be way more effective and powerful than written articles.
Infographics are also a recent trend intended to make the content easier to read and comprehend while being presented in an eye-catching layout.
Ratings and Comments
There are great benefits of letting your visitors rate the articles, pages or items on your website. For one, it can help other users find what is valuable/interesting and what is probably not worth reading. Also, user ratings can be used to determine with topics/items are more appealing to your users, and thus help you steer your site in the right direction and focus on what works.
Allowing users to submit comments and reviews also adds great value and credibility to your site and encourages readers to keep coming back for updates or replies.
Discussion Forum
One of the best ways to build a base of loyal and frequent users is to have a public discussion forum where anyone can register to ask questions, voice their opinions and engage in conversations about different issues.
Building an active forum with devoted members and readers may take a long period of time, but once you're there it'll all be worth it when you can simply sit back and watch new unique content and pages being added to your website daily by others.
However, keep in mind that forum software requires a lot of server resources. If you expect your forum to become a large community with thousands of users you may want to install it on a dedicated server from the beginning. Alternatively, you can have it installed on an upgradable web hosting plan so that anytime it outgrows your resources you can easily upgrade your plan or add extra resources, like disk space or bandwidth, without having to move your data to a new server.
Social Media
Almost everyone online these days has an account at Facebook, Twitter and/or other social networks. Having an account for your website on such social networks allows you to stay in touch with many "followers" and keep them posted on new updates, features, offers, articles, etc.
Social media also offers a rich medium where a lot of people who might be interested in the topics you deal with can discover your website and help promote and introduce it to many others through likes, retweets, shares, comments, etc.
Make sure to implement social sharing buttons on your pages to offer readers an easy way to share your website with their friends or followers and spread the word.
User Contributions
If you have a blog or an article section on your website, you may want to consider allowing your users to contribute to your content by writing unique blog posts or articles for publishing on your site. This is a great and free method to grow your content and offer your readers helpful articles written by experts, professionals, amateurs, etc.