eb developers face the challenge of creating a Web site that viewers will enjoy and find informative. This, however, comes with the caveat of knowing your audience's preferences and idiosyncrasies.

For instance, some individuals will read every page of "The Wall Street Journal Online." Others will skim USAToday.com, paying close attention to the colorful charts and action-oriented photography.

Web developers and designers must constantly come up with new hooks: tools, interactive components and essentially the stuff that will keep visitors on the site for a fair amount of time, and more important, that will keep them coming back regularly.

Developers will most often create the technical backend of the site and its workings. Designers add an aesthetic touch. Often developers and designers are one in the same; however, if you are working with a team, make sure your goals are clearly stated. The end-result will be a successful site and a positive representation of your company.

A Web site that features a forum or bulletin board almost guarantees traffic if the company designates an administrator to monitor it.

As traffic to the site increases, it may become an administrator's full time job not only to keep the company out of legal hot water based on words exchanged on the site, but also to ensure that it doesn't harm the company's reputation.

Since it's crucial for businesses to stay in touch with current and potential customers, it's difficult to find a smart, professional-looking Web site without some variety of an interactive sounding board.

The recent explosion of blogging (writing an online journal and sharing it with others, whether subscribers or not) has opened many doors for improving Web content. Posting a blog or a link to it on your site is a powerful way to provide fresh material.

One doesn't have to be a Web code guru to blog. Weblog companies offer intuitive and user-friendly interfaces through which to speak your mind and educate others ... and they handle all the technical work.

To move a Web site higher in the search engine result rankings, include refreshed, searchable content. Continually adding new material and relevant keywords to your Web site will help people find it, even those whom you may not expect. Include a catch phrase or something else unique somewhere on the site to see if others will find it by conducting a search using those words. (Blogs and forums are not always searchable, however. Before putting all your eggs in one basket, check with providers to see if the content is public and searchable.)

News headlines will surely grab visitors' attention if it is pertinent or interesting. Sometimes it is worthwhile to include a tidbit that people are not expecting, but keep the content relevant.

Have you ever spent more time than expected reading the News of the Weird links? Not to say that a man who fished an alligator wearing a gold watch out of his toilet isn't worth a laugh and a few minutes on your site, but giving visitors something interesting to come back to provides immeasurable benefits.

The more you keep the site up to date on trends and technology, the more others will look to it for guidance. They will also share it with peers and friends.

An extension of including headlines and a blog on your site is adding Really Simple Syndication (RSS) or Extensible Markup Language (XML) feeds. With these, visitors can place the content from your site onto their own pages or on news aggregators. RSS and XML feeds will bring visitors to your site from another referral source.

Case in point, GS Online enables visitors to import headlines and links from our News from the Wire section to their MyYahoo account or news feeds. The technical backend is based on an open sharing platform that the Web developer of the host site has engineered.

Creating the share with sound technical protocols will protect the site from hackers' attempts to infiltrate your server. If a third-party service administers your site, be thorough and don't be afraid to ask questions; after all, your investment and reputation are at stake.

Taking time to create valuable and interesting content for a Web site is crucial, especially in the highly competitive and fickle virtual world. If visitors don't find what they need on your site, they will go somewhere else.

As the old saying goes, know thine enemy. Study other successful sites for inspiration, and tailor your offerings to compete effectively. However, do not copy their methods exactly; keep the site unique to your company.

Whatever you choose, keep the content fresh. You don't have to change it every single day, but make updates at least once a week or month. There are plenty of content providers and link partners with which to align your site. They will refresh the content automatically so that you don't have to worry about it. Search for "content providers" on the Web, and you will find hundreds of potential partners.

Always stay a few steps ahead of your competitors and develop an active interest in what your audience wants. You will have them eating out of your hand.

This is the fifth article in a series on developing effective Web sites. The previous article "Slippery Statistics of Digital Popularity" appeared in the Oct. 10, 2005 issue (05:10:01) of The Green Sheet.