There are many people capable of building their own personal sites. They can put cute little comments and pictures of their pets or kids up for you to enjoy. But, when it comes to having a website that will be a form of marketing for your business, you want someone with experience. Someone who has an understanding of Internet and what is best way to boost exposure of a website.

They must have a clear knowledge of a variety of contributing factors to your sites' success. Such factors include how best to market your site, options and limitations of graphics, how to create a site that is effective within search engines, knowledge of drawbacks of different browsers, and understanding of coding required for your site.

It is crucial that your designer understands you, your company and what you want to accomplish with your website. To determine this, you need to answer a few questions first.

There are two keys to earning repeat visitors: fresh content and interactive features.

If you can offer your visitors new articles, columns, interviews, information, jokes, cartoons, pictures, etc. every few days, great. But if you can't, you have another option: let visitors work for you. Here's how.

MESSAGE BOARDS

The simplest way to keep people coming back for more is to put up a message board. There are several free ones (http://www.bravenet.com offers a good one) that you can link to your site with very little effort. It's not enough just to put it up there, though. You must also be ringleader-start several interesting threads yourself. Give your vistors a reason to respond to your threads. How?

· Ask questions related to your content · Ask people to introduce themselves · Discuss a controversial topic · Comment on something in news that relates to your content · Tell a funny story or joke, and ask visitors to post their own · Encourage visitors to post feedback about what they'd like to see on your site · Ask people to vote for their favorite [blank]. Movie, band, magazine, celebrity, etc. · Offer simple tips in your field of expertise, and ask visitors to add their own

Want to make your board look more active? Post responses to your own messages under different names. Or ask friends to post, just to get discussions flowing. Whenever someone posts, at least in beginning, drop him or her an e-mail to say, "Thanks for visiting my forum."

Be sure you have ability to delete offensive messages and spam from your board, or you may scare people away from posting.

CONTESTS

People love contests. Not just ones in which you can win a million dollars or a trip to Bahamas, but little giveaways. Free t-shirts or books or gift certificates. Think you can't afford it? Think again.

If you run a monthly contest, and offer a prize worth $10, your total cost per month shouldn't be over $13 (including postage.)

What kind of contest should you run?