The majority of websites out there are full of useful information, but often appear a little outdated and not structured in such a way that encourages usage by their target market. A good website allows the user to see or learn new things at every visit and encourages the customer to stay for a while, read, shop or enquire further about your services. The more user friendly and up to date your website is for your market, the more likely they are to return again and again. Customised programming of special modules on your website can add a great deal of interactivity to your website that often can be set to automatically update or involve the customer past the point of normal browsing time.

 

MEMBERSHIP/SUBSCRIBERS SECTIONS

Your members/subscribers can register on-line for newsletters, passwords and even enter restricted areas for members only. Membership payment applications can also be made on-line, through a secure SSL payment gateway. You, as the administrator do not then ever lose control or have to double handle management of membership content, details, and pricing for your subscribers. Once you provide us with a merchant ID from your bank, Star 3 Media can set up the secure payment gateway.

 

SHOPPING CART/ECOMMERCE

Star 3 Media will customize your e-Commerce shopping cart and ensure that it is tailored to meet your needs. Since each business model is different, it is by far an advantage to specify each businesses shopping requirement and then providing the end user a complete unique online shopping experience from your website. Again, the Star 3 Media CMS will allow you to add products, remove products, update images, change product categories, provide downloadable PDF catalogues and brochure ware on products and sell services as items in the shopping cart (such as gift vouchers).

 

RSS NEWS FEED SUPPORT

Most sites today have a news module component and some sort of RSS feed. RSS feeds pull information generally from news field databases and ensure that the latest news in your industry is automatically presented on to the website with very little management by the website owner. A good example of an RSS feed would be national weather updates. You can create your own news module should you wish too, but it would have to be regularly updated and managed by either Star 3 Media or your reception/administrator. RSS solves a problem for people who regularly use the web. It allows the user to easily stay informed by retrieving summaries of the latest content from the sites you are interested in rather than needing to visit each site individually and not needing to join each site’s email newsletter. As this is a relatively new technology platform most other CMS systems cannot support the format, however at Star 3 Media our websites comply with RSS and is even readable on all new PDA’s.

 

NEWSLETTERS

Mass subscriber newsletters can be created in a few clicks and sent to the mailing list of your choice. Once our team of designers creates the templates that you require, they are simply added to the newsletter module, which is able to be used straight away. The eNewsletter is formatted very similarly to Microsoft Word, meaning that most users are comfortable using it straight away as they are already quite familiar with using word on a day-to-day basis.

 

ONLINE QUESTIONNAIRE

Online questionnaires are a popular way of researching your customer base for further services they require and to gather valuable intelligence data on how your business is servicing the current needs in the market. You tend to get more honest results when people are able to complete questionnaires in the privacy of their office or home.

 

SEARCH FUNCTION

Search functions can be added to the corner of a site to look for keywords that have been used in pages on the site or to search the web. This customised programming is able to take two or three words and submission will initiate a search of the key words brining up any document or phrase where the word has been used in order of relevance. This is a great addition to a home page as most people will look for the page and rather than moving on to another site or going to Google will take up the option of the search which encourages them to stay on your site longer and look at more items.

 

SUBSCRIPTION FORMS

A form is basically a list of questions or fields to fill in that, after successful completion of the marked items the user can submit, receive notification that the submission has been successful and then also have the opportunity to unsubscribe at a later date should they wish too. The programming of this must be customised to the database that is built on the back end of the site. This database then allows this information to be automatically updated in the system without any administrator intervention. The presence of an online form, provided that response times are measured and immediate, allows for efficient communication and provides a comfortable medium for clients to make a non-aggressive first contact.

 

QUESTION/SYMPTOM SORTER

Online symptom sorters are a great way of providing useful practical information to help your customers with any common problems that they might have, provided you include plenty of disclaimers for those who choose to self diagnose.

 

APPOINTMENT BOOKING FEATURE

Have you ever thought of integrating your current ‘request an appointment’ feature on your website and actually allowing your clients to book the appointments online? Sometimes the application of this kind of feature is dependent on the technology integration, as your current desk top appointment software would need to communicate with the website, but we have included it to show you that sometimes your administration ‘wish lists’ can become a reality!

 

IMAGE AND VIDEO GALLERY

The Star 3 Media image gallery module can be added to any website that has a CMS and can either be flash animated to slowly rotate through images or static, where the images are fixed. In our static gallery new developments or images can be easily updated on the site so that in a few clicks you can have the images up and live for viewing. We also have an onsite photographic studio and professional photographer, which means you can have the professional looking shots that you need. Television commercials (TVC) and instructional service development videos can also be added to any website. Star 3 Media can enhance the graphics also with some flash animation and compress the animation so that it is quick to load with a low buffering time.