Put Your Website On Auto Pilot

STEP 3: TAKING ACTION

Now, armed with all the data and information you need, you are in the best possible position to take the steps that will add hours of free time to your life and let you sit back and enjoy your growing Website!

Again, staying organized is the best way to go about it:

• choose an appropriate Web host
• design the Web based forms
• prepare the autoresponder messages
• write the Webpages that contain answers
• install a script that acts on the form data
• configure your eMail client to filter feedback

CHOOSING THE RIGHT WEB HOST

In order for automation to work best, your Web host should allow you some flexibility and have some specific features. Here is a brief list - the Web host should:

• offer HTML forms support
• give you unlimited eMail autoresponders
• allow access to your CGI-bin library
• permit you to run your own CGI and Perl scripts
• give full FTP access to your site with ability to create new directories
• (optional) offer online database creation tools

To further add power to the process, get an eMail client program that has powerful filtering capabilities to sort out incoming eMail. I use Pegasus Mail, but many others like Eudora are just as good. Generally eMail clients that come bundled with Web browsers aren't as powerful, though you might be able to manage with MS Outlook Express or Netscape Messenger.

DESIGN THE FORMS

There are many important advantages in using Web based forms to gather visitor feedback.

• you can categorize the feedback into distinct groups e.g. one form for questions, one for site suggestions and one for navigation problems
• you can ask for all the information you think is relevant. By making some fields in the form mandatory, you can ensure a minimum level of data is collected from each feedback message
• you can validate data and prevent errors like typographic mistakes and incompletely filled data fields being entered into your form by using basic Javascript. For instance, the Web form can ensure that an eMail address is in the proper format e.g. abc @ xyz.com
• you control the way feedback is offered by setting up YES/NO options or offering multiple choices from which the visitor selects one, and this allows easier grouping of the data and addition to a database, as well as ensuring that no important piece of information is missing.
• The data entered into forms can be automatically imported into a database for later retrieval and searching

Here are some tips for designing your Web based forms:

1. Use separate forms for each major category of feedback. For instance, use one form for visitor comments, praise and criticism, another one for them to ask questions and a third one to let them submit site suggestions.

2. Keep the forms down to a limited size. Don't ask for irrelevant data. Offer simple choices - check boxes to select, or radio buttons to click.

3. Make some fields mandatory, like the visitor's name and eMail address. This allows you to generate a personalized reply by eMail from the form data, and gives you a way to contact them later on.

4. Use scripts to add inputted data to a database, generate an eMail copy of the information to you, and take the visitor to a specified section of your Website after filling up the form.

PREPARE THE AUTORESPONDER MESSAGES

For each category of feedback, define the most appropriate answers and create a generic message which you'll use to reply to the visitor. As discussed earlier, this may be a single common message to respond to user praise or criticism, or to site suggestions.

Or it may involve answering the most frequent queries - 5, 10 or even 50. To do this, you would create a separate section of FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS (or FAQ) which contains the answers. The FAQ must be frequently updated and expanded to include newer questions and information.

For advertising and sponsorship queries, you could create an online Media Kit that contains all material relevant to an advertiser - traffic, visitor count, demographic data, page views, rates, nature of ads, payment options, discounts and more.

If a visitor writes about navigation difficulties, you'll need to respond with a list of the probable causes - server downtime, changed file names, slow Internet connections, incompatible browsers - and also suggest ways to overcome them. For instance, you could

• direct the user to a SEARCH page within your site to look for the new location of the Webpage
• request him to try after some time when the server is functional again
• invite them to send you eMail for help

In all cases it is best to create these messages in two formats:

• a Webpage
• an eMail message

CREATING THE WEBPAGES

For each category of auto-response messages, create a separate Webpage.

For instance, your FAQ page could have a long list of the most often asked questions, with each one linked to the answer or another Webpage containing the answer. As your site grows and expands, you could constantly add new questions to the page, making it a valuable resource in its own right.

To assist with navigational difficulties, a section titled "How to use this site" detailing your navigation aids, the layout of your site and a SITE MAP could help users enormously.

INSTALL A SCRIPT THAT ACTS ON FORM DATA

Now that you're all set to go, let's see how you can play around with the data that a user enters into your Website form. Here are some possibilities:

• copy the information from all (or selected) fields into an online database
• send the same data to you as an eMail
• generate an eMail response automatically to the user based on the eMail addresses entered into the form, and containing a message pre-defined by you
• automatically transfer a user to a pre-determined section of your site upon completing the feedback form

These basic functions are enough to handle most Website feedback issues.

But how do you bring such functionality to your Website forms?

By using programs called scripts. There are many kinds of scripts, but basic CGI and Perl scripts can handle these functions effectively. You, the Webmaster, will install a script on your server. The data a user enters into a Web based form will be submitted to the script which acts on it in a specified way to bring about the desired effect.

An example might help you understand this better. Let us take the case of a FAQ page and its related form. A user Mrs.Alice visits your site, reads about a product, and wants more information. So Alice fills up the form and clicks on the SUBMIT button.

Here's what the script does:

• collects the user's name and eMail address and files it in a database so that you can contact her later, if necessary
• copies the data into an eMail message to you, for your records and immediate action
• instantly generates a personalized eMail message beginning with "Dear Mrs.Alice" and going on to acknowledge receipt of the form data and inviting her to visit the FAQ page at http://www.yoursite.com/FAQ.html if her need for the information is urgent
• transfers her automatically to the FAQ page itself!!!

Then why the eMail? Because it acts as a reminder in case Alice decides she wants to come back later and check out your site for this same info. Plus it shows that you care enough to send a reminder by eMail - this helps build trust in you and your Website.

CONFIGURE YOUR EMAIL CLIENT

Do you remember how the script generates a copy of each form's data into an eMail message to you? Acting on this eMail might become a chore when more and more visitors come to your site and send in their feedback. By adding another level of automation, even this can be made simple.

While creating your HTML forms, remember to use a unique identifier for each distinct type of form. Then in your eMail client, configure the Filtering option to automatically send all eMail with that identifier into a separate eMail folder!

For instance, Alice's eMail would be filtered into a folder titled "User Questions". From time to time, depending on the urgency of your site's content, you would open that folder and read the messages.

If the question is likely to have been answered on your FAQ page, you could either do nothing, or send out a 'form letter' asking the user whether or not she found the answer to her query on the FAQ page helpful. Even this can be automated!

If Alice's question is one that isn't on the FAQ page, type out a detailed reply including references to helpful material on your Website if available. Then, before you send the message, copy and paste the content into the FAQ Web page. That way, by periodically updating your FAQ, you don't need to answer the same query the next time!

PUT UP YOUR FEET AND ENJOY LIFE!

There you are. A simple, no-nonsense way to automate the entire process of handling feedback from your Website. If you receive 30 feedback messages a day from your Website, and take an average of 1 minute to reply to each, automation will save you 30 minutes a day. Or 15 hours a month. Or 180 hours a year!

Think about that - an additional five days every year.

So maybe God did hear your prayer. And answered by giving you the means to automate your Website.

What would you call this? Webmastering heaven? Hands-free driving?

No matter. Sit back and enjoy the ride!

Author's Note:

For a working real-life example of the concepts discussed in this article, visit my Website at http://www.DrMani.com The script I used for this site is MasterRecommend.cgi from William Bontrager's site at http://www.willmaster.com