Set Up Once for Repeat Visitors Forever
Setting up a service as described in this article, or
variations thereof, can automatically and with near-zero
maintenance, bring people back to your site, again and
again, for as long as you make the service available.
The service described here is an online household supplies
and groceries shopping list. A printer-friendly page is
generated with the click of a button. This shopping list
can fit in well with recipe, child raising, party supplies,
and other web sites with homemakers as the largest
demographic.
Home and garden maintenance web sites might vary the
shopping list for lumber, nails, tools, how-to manuals,
and other items essential to many do-it-yourself projects.
The idea is that a new list must be set up, or the old one
revised, for each project. Otherwise, that incentive to
return is absent.
Knitting, scrapbooking, crafting, and similar web sites can
vary the list for their own site visitors. Large shopping
sites might have several lists craft, clothing ensembles,
back-to-school, and other categories.
A live, ready to use, online household supplies and
groceries shopping list is at
/master/formV4/shoppinglist.html
Want a Wish List?
Would your web site benefit by providing an easy to use wish
list for your site visitors?
If you have more than one product, and not more than would
fit elegantly on a wish list page, all of your products can
be listed. A wish list might use checkboxes instead of "how
many" fields. Wishers can check the items they want to have.
Products or services on the wish list can be your own or
your affiliate programs'.
The wish list can ask for name and email address. Then,
when the printer-friendly page is generated, the contact
information can be sent to you along with their wish list.
It makes personal follow-up possible.
Whether shopping list or wish list, the list details are
remembered in a cookie for when the user returns.
How To Set It Up
Master Form V4 from /mfv4 is the engine
for the shopping/wish list. It can handle as many lists as
you want to set up.
If you don't already have Master Form V4 installed, it will
need to be done. (We provide professional installation
services for those who are uncertain about, or don't want
to be bothered with, installing CGI programs.)
The rest of the set-up is uploading the web page with the
list and a separate printer-friendly web page template.
The Shopping List
The household supplies and groceries shopping list is large.
The page has a lot of code. Items may be removed or added,
or a completely new list created.
Here is a copy of a working shopping list.
The hidden field name="flowto" points to the location of the
printer-friendly template. (The template is addressed in the
next section.)
JavaScript below the list is used to set a cookie when a
button is clicked to remember the list items and amounts.
There should be no need to change the JavaScript unless you
want to change the cookie name or make the cookie last more
or less than the year it currently lasts.
For the JavaScript to work correctly, shopping/wish list
form field names must begin with a letter and be composed
only of letters, numbers, and underscore characters.
The shopping list has a "remember" button, a "remember and
printable page" button, and a "forget" button. If you change
any form field names (or hidden field values) for the
shopping list after you've "remembered," click the "forget"
button to purge the old names and values from the cookie
before proceeding.
Master Series affiliates, be sure to change the link URL of
the "Powered by Master Form V4" line to your own affiliate
link URL.
The Printer-Friendly Template
If you look at the overall structure of the printer-friendly
template, it may appear somewhat confusing. But if you look
at it line by line, you'll notice that each line has to do
with one item of the shopping list.
Here is a copy of the printer-friendly template for use with
the shopping list, above.
It may be obvious how the template is constructed after
studying it for a moment or two. If not, the Master Form V4
users manual has details about how to create that and other
types of templates. (The software is a sophisticated form
handler.)
The printer-friendly page contains the URL to the shopping
list page so the user can return to it. It may also contain
your primary URL and maybe even a blurb reinforcing the idea
that your web site is a good one to remember.
Testing
Upload the shopping list page and the printer-friendly
template. Verify that printer-friendly template is
retrievable and that the generated page is acceptable.
Specify an amount for each shopping list item, and specify
items for all blank fields. In this way, you can verify
that all show up on the printer-friendly page. If any are
missing, a placeholder is incorrect. (Placeholders are words
representing form field names between double square
brackets, and can also be if/if sets for conditional
printing. The Master Form V4 users manual has more
information.)
The look of the printer-friendly page generated from the
template may vary from browser to browser. Test your
installation with each browser you have available.
Repeat Visitors
To come back to your web site, folks will need a reason. The
more compelling the reason, the more likely they'll be back.
The shopping/wish list is just one tool for that. It will be
perfect for some sites, not so perfect for others. The
shopping/wish list is near-zero maintenance.
If in doubt, give it a try, maybe having it available for
six months or a year just to see. Link to it. Talk about it
on discussion groups or forums.
Put a counter on the shopping/wish list page or, preferably,
use a statistics program or other software that recognizes
repeat visits.
Good luck with it. May you quickly and smoothly build a
large group of repeat visitors.
Will Bontrager
©2006 Bontrager Connection, LLC
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