mrbelfry
Tue., Apr. 5, 2005, 7:54 am
I've always thought that having a fun site is the best way to encourage repeat visits and also to encourage people to tell their friends about the site. I was never sure if I should have a fun 'section' or just make the whole site fun. The problem with making the whole site fun is that some things aren't fun and the page needs to look serious to convery the seriousness of the subject. The problem with having a fun section is that people only visit the fun bit!
An idea I played around with on my church site (see below) is rotating banners. I have these split into sections so some pages can have any random banner but some can only have banners from a particular section (so I can make some fun banners and make sure they never appear on a serious page). I tried to make the youth banners 'fun' using images from some of our youth events, because we try and make them fun and it gives visitor an idea of what we do at youth. I think it works to a limited extent (it got a few young people talking about the site when they saw themselves with silly wigs) but my paintshop skills are fairly low and it takes me ages to make a banner which is why I only managed a few!
Another idea I had was maybe caption competitions using images either of people at the church or events we've done but I never got round to that! I've also thought about e-cards and will maybe do something like that we the redesign I am doing currently.
A site I really like which I think is quite a fun site is www.hopecity.co.uk I often hang around there for inspiration
An idea I played around with on my church site (see below) is rotating banners. I have these split into sections so some pages can have any random banner but some can only have banners from a particular section (so I can make some fun banners and make sure they never appear on a serious page). I tried to make the youth banners 'fun' using images from some of our youth events, because we try and make them fun and it gives visitor an idea of what we do at youth. I think it works to a limited extent (it got a few young people talking about the site when they saw themselves with silly wigs) but my paintshop skills are fairly low and it takes me ages to make a banner which is why I only managed a few!
Another idea I had was maybe caption competitions using images either of people at the church or events we've done but I never got round to that! I've also thought about e-cards and will maybe do something like that we the redesign I am doing currently.
A site I really like which I think is quite a fun site is www.hopecity.co.uk I often hang around there for inspiration