One of the most effective things you can do with your website is to give users power over it. Give them choices, tools and features that encourage them to interact with the site and provide them with a sense of control over it.  

Here are some interactive features you could consider for your website:

• Search - Provide users with the ability to search your website for words, phrases and/or provide them with key topics from which to choose.  Consider in what format the results are to be presented.
• Online forms - How many, how many fields in each, what needs to be verified before the user submits the form - eg have they completed the field for email address?
• 'Members only' section to the site - Is there a section that can only be accessed via a user name and password?  Where are the user names and passwords to be stored?  How will you handle people who forget their password?
• Interactive questionnaires/surveys/polls - How many, how long, how presented?  What will you do with the information provided by the users?
• Animations - How can you (should you) use Flash or other programming devices to bring life into your site and illustrate products and services?
• Subscription email lists - What can users subscribe to by way of email lists, such as e-newsletters?
• Links to other sites - How many and what tools are to be employed during maintenance to check automatically on the veracity of the link?
• Downloadable files  - PDFs, images, audio files-how many, in what format, with what restrictions?
• Contact Us -  What contact details should be on the site - eg email, telephone, street address?
• Site map - What is the site map of the website to look like?  Just text as links or is a diagram preferred?
• Text-only version of the site - Will you need a text-only version of the website for customers who are visually impaired or with a slow/expensive connection?
• Multilingual requirements - How many languages?  How much of the site is to be multilingual?  At what point are users to nominate which language they want to view the site in - eg home page, a splash page?
• Provision for printing and bookmarking (ie allowing users to store the website address in their browser's memory or "favourites" section) - Are users to be able to bookmark specific pages or is the home page sufficient?  Do you want any special print function other than the default function supplied by the browser?  

What to do

Time and budgets usually mean organisations have to restrict the features used on the site, so prioritising is an important task. Which ones come first? The following checklist can be used to assist the decision-making process. 

• Does the function add value to the aims and objectives of the site?
• Do your current computer systems, databases, and office procedures support the function? If not, what amount of work and expenditure would be required to achieve compatibility?
• Are there implications for people's workloads - eg responding to emails?
• Will the feature save the organisation time and money - eg reducing printing costs and staff time, reducing time taken answering phone enquiries and taking orders?
• Will the function provide a potential revenue stream - eg online shop? 
• Is there a cost of maintaining the function - eg license fees and time required?
• Is training required to enable staff to maintain the function?
• When the function is added will it affect the speed of the site? 
• Does the function call on the target audience to have a level of computer speed and power, browser version and a range of plug-ins that is reasonable?
• Considering the answers to the above questions, does the cost of this feature represent value for money?

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