For example, you may have written a general article about dental floss (ok so you have a really tough job on your hands of keeping your reader onboard!). In order to ensure that your reader does not leave your site after reading article, you could include at end of it a once sentence paragraph that says “If you have ever wondered how they get mint flavour into dental floss, click here for an article which explains all”. This is a much more powerful strategy than just having a long list of “other related articles” at bottom of page, which reader may not even be able to see because they have not scrolled down far enough. Another benefit of this strategy is that with some clever and imaginative wording in that last one sentence paragraph, you can steer your reader towards a particular page, again possibly with information about a product that you wish to sell. As with all strategies, there is lots of room for experimentation to see what works best. As well as playing with words to come up with a sentence that will ignite your reader’s interest, you can try different formats for text itself. For example, if last paragraph looks just like rest of article, it will almost certainly be read and taken in by reader.

Implementing this inter-linking strategy may take a little more time and thought, if you have previously only carpet-bombed your site with as many articles as possible. However, it is definitely another valuable tool for webmaster’s toolbox, or weapon for his armory, depending on how fanatical you are about keeping visitors on your site as long as possible!

An estimatation of time needed: give people an idea of how much time survey will take to complete.

A mix of open and closed questions: A closed question gives quantitative information. Example: Please rate usability of web site ? Very good – Good – Average – Bad – Very bad An open question gives qualitative information. Example: What subject would like to see on site ? Users are free to answer as they want to.

Closed questions are much easier to analyze. With an open questions you may get as many different answers as respondents. It is sometimes useful to mix open and closed in same question. Example: What subject would like to see on site ? Answer: News – Interviews – Pictures – Games – Other, please specify. Therefore a good ratio is one open question for five closed questions.

No personal information that are not necessary: do you need snailmail address or phone number ? The more personal information you ask, fewer responses you will get as people will give up along way.

Ask respondents to leave a comment at end of survey. Inform them that you can use a comment as a testimonial.

Let users enter a sweepstake, offer exclusive content, give them a giveaway, anything to motivate people to take survey.

When you write questions and answers, always have in mind what it will take to analyze them. Do not offer too many answers. Do not ask too many open questions. More answers mean multiple different results and a risk that trend that should be there is diluted and cannot be seen.

The best tool to analyze answers is a spreadsheet such as Excel. Although some online survey tools are able to analyze answers.

It is not recommended to give results online to users as it can influence people who have not taken survey yet and inform competition.

Some suggested questions to ask in a survey are:

What do you think of web site content ? Very good – Good – Average – Bad – Very bad

Rate usability of site ? Very good – Good – Average – Bad – Very bad

Is it easy to find relevant content on site ? Yes – No

Do you like design of site ? Yes – No

What content would like to see on site ? Open question, users are free to answer what they want to

After 100 or 1,000 surveys filled and analyzed, you already have a good snapshot of users' opinion. The next step is to adapt web site based on survey's results and satisfy users.