If you want to marry someone do you walk up to them and ask “will you marry me?” Obviously not because there is no relationship. You must first contact them by starting a conversation and slowing building your relationship with successive conversations and serving them.

The same strategy works in online marketing. Visitors generally don’t buy from the first contact with your website. You need to interact with them so they get to know, like and trust you. Once you’ve won their trust they’ll be more inclined to purchase your goods and services. Creating an interactive website enables you to interact with your website visitors, build long term relationships, offer valuable content plus recommend your products and services.

How to make an interactive website

One of the quickest and easiest ways is to create a blog. It can be a stand-alone website (domain.com) or add one to your current website (domain.com/blog or blog.domain.com)

Steps for creating a stand-alone blog

1. Register a domain

Go to your favorite domain name registrar to register a domain name for your business. include your business name or one of your main keywords in the domain name so it’s easy to remember and shows what it’s about.

2. Web Hosting

Find a web hosting service that allows a one click installation of WordPress. WordPress is the platform for building your interactive website. You’ll need proximately 50MB of disc space to allow room for lots of pages, images and other files. Get and 3GB of bandwidth to support thousands of visitors to your website. Make sure you can easily upgrade your hosting plan should you need more space and bandwidth.

3. Install WordPress

WordPress is the software of choice because it has interactive features already built into it. Some of these features include:

• Automatic pinging of the search engines
• RSS feeds
• Comments
• Automatic bookmarking
• Automatic newsletter subscriptions
• Multiple editors of content
• Blog directories

To install WordPress log in to your web hosting control panel (cpanel) and click on the Fantastico icon. Once installed enter the domain name in your browser. The default theme will now be displayed.

4. Select a theme

I suggest purchasing a professional theme from Studiopress, Thesis or Wpremix so it contains no code errors, is fast loading, search engine friendly and easy to customize. If you prefer a free theme Google “Free WordPress Themes” to select from 100s of themes.

• Download the new theme to your desktop.
• Unzip the files. It will create a folder containing the name of your template.
• Upload this template folder to wp-content-themes folder using FTP software such as Filezilla.
• Login to the WordPress administration panel.
• Click on the design tab to activate your new theme.
• Enter your website address in your browser to view your interactive website.

There are many advanced strategies for customizing the appearance and optimizing your blog for the search engines, however start adding new content to your website immediately by creating pages and posts.

Get a professional interactive website by visiting:
Maryland Website Design

Herman Drost is the Certified Internet Webmaster (CIW)
Owner and author of http://www.iSiteBuild.com

Free Site Builder : 1&1(1and1) My Business Site : Instantly Create Your Business Website