Of course, most coveted data is an email address. This is because email address allows visitor to be contacted over and over again in future. This, in turn, improves odds that something might actually be purchased (assuming site has something for sale) or that message is read and understood.

In order for a webmaster and company to be completely ethical, uses of this information need to be clearly spelled out in simple, plain English. This is called a Privacy policy, and all well designed web sites which ask for any kind of personal data should include one. This is not a legal requirement, it is simply common courtesy. You are asking for something, and you should disclose how that is going to be used and protected (if necessary). This allows people to make informed decisions about what they want to tell you.

What should a privacy policy include? Some of my suggestions include following.

Email usage - If you are asking for an email address, then you need to tell your visitors exactly what you plan on doing with it. For example, on our web site we ask for an email address for guestbooks, feedback and joining a mailing list. In first two instances, we do not use email address for anything except a thank you and never send anything else, so this is stated in privacy policy. Of course, we do send repeat emails if a mailing list is joined, but we don't give those email addresses to anyone. This is also clearly stated.

Cookie usage - If your site uses cookies, you should explain completely and fully what they are used for an how long they persist (remain before they are deleted). The press has made a big deal about cookies, and because of that people tend to have very negative opinions. This makes it very important to explain exactly why you are using them.

Okay, what's next thing I'm going to look for? A search box, a site map or some other, more general way to find information that I need. Site maps can be difficult to maintain unless they are very general (which, in turn, makes them less useful). Search boxes, on other hand, require no care and feeding at all once you've got them installed (although you should spend some time tuning them to make them even more useful).

If you have a site with a large amount of information or a site which is very diverse, a search box is your best bet.

- First of all, it allows your visitors to find things that they might not otherwise find.

- It causes visitors to go deeper into your site, to stay longer and to look around more.

- Just as important, very little maintenance is required.

- In addition, most of search utilities are free for small sites.

- The pay versions are extremely inexpensive for benefits they provide.

- It just makes your site (no matter how large or how small) look more professional.

Some of unexpected side effects include:

- You make it even more likely that your visitors can wind up on any page. This means your site navigation must be very good or your visitors will get lost.

- Visitors will find themselves dumped onto pages on your site which you did not intend for them to find. Under construction pages, "spam traps" and anything else you've got. Be sure to use metatags and Robots.Txt file to control indexing well.

You have several options when choosing a search box for your site.

- If you edit your site using Microsoft FrontPage, you could use built-in search functions. Note that searching facilities in FrontPage are so lame that personally I would not recommend them to anyone.

- You could use a self-hosted script if your host allows CGI routines. I would not recommend this method, as these routines tend to be very server intensive. In fact, most web hosts that I have found will not allow them to run.

- The best option is to use one of remotely-hosted search functions for your site.

I have found three excellent remotely-hosted search companies.

Atomz - Probably overall best of bunch, but also most expensive by far. I liked Atomz, but we switched because it just became too costly. Atomz allows up to 500 pages to be spidered for free, with advertisements in your results pages.

http://www.internet-tips.net/Products/atomz.htm

Freefind - Excellent service, and one that we settled on because it was very full functioned and inexpensive. The version for personal or nonprofit sites is only $19 per month, a year paid in advance. Up to 32mb of pages can be spidered for free.

http://www.freefind.com/indexc.html

Whatuseek - Another excellent service, allowing up to 1,000 pages to be spidered for free.

http://intra.whatuseek.com/index.shtml

Each of these services has it's own advantages and disadvantages, but all of them work basically same. My recommendation is to try out all three services using their free versions to determine exactly which one is best for your needs. Then go ahead and purchase paid version for correct fit.

How does this all work? Well, once you sign you for an account you supply URL for your web site. You then define a template for results page, or you can use one of basic templates that each service provides. All three services allow you to define a template (in advanced mode) which looks exactly like your site. You then define any special parameters such as pages to exclude, usernames and passwords for protected pages and so on. Once that's done, you install search code on each of your web pages, then tell search utility to spider your site.

It's as simple as that. I fully tested each of three search companies in about an eight hour day before finally settling on one that best met requirements of my site.

Okay, so let's say you now have chosen a search function for your site, you've created perfect template and you've got your HTML code. What else do you need to do?