Appendix F. Project Website Tools and Applications

At a minimum, a project website or webpage should include the following:

Project Description – As you would in a project fact sheet or newsletter, describe your project in layman’s terms.  Remember to include project location information, because website visitors could be from anywhere in the world.  Consider complementing the website with graphics or visualizations, but be mindful that the use of too many graphics will hinder the performance of the website – especially for those who are on a slower internet connection.

 Contact Information – While websites are useful for informing, by providing contact information such as an e-mail address, telephone number, and mailing address, important feedback and questions from site visitors can be obtained.  Additionally, you may find that new or previously unidentified stakeholders express an interest in the project.

 

Additional website tools that facilitate coordination and communication include:

Downloadable Documents –  Post documents, such as project fact sheets or newsletters, final reports, preliminary plans, visualizations, or meeting minutes for public review.  Documents should be in a common/standard file format, such as Microsoft Office or Adobe Acrobat (.pdf).  For additional information visit: http://www.Adobe.com.

 Guest Book – A Guest Book allows visitors to interact with the project team and provide important feedback on the site may be used on the website. A Guest Book can also help to collect visitor e-mail addresses. Automatic responses can be e-mailed to those who make Guest Book submissions, and Guest Book submissions can be filtered for profanity.          

 Left: Sample of a Guest Book
source: www.networksolutions.com

 

 Hit Counter -  A display on your website that shows you how many times visitors viewed or “hit” a certain web page on your website.  Quantitative reports provided by the counter allow you to better understand how visitors use the website.

 Photo Gallery –  Photo gallery or photo album is a feature that allows you to display several images as “thumbnails” (smaller images that visitors click on to enlarge the image).  Consider using a photo gallery to display several design options, before and after photos/visualizations, or to show the progression of construction, for example.

Message Board – A message board is a special web page that provides a forum for topic-specific conversations.   Message boards allow you to engage website visitors, who can view and post messages on various subjects.

 

 

 

 

 

Sample Message Board

source:www.networksolutions.com

 Online Polling -  An online poll can be used to garner input from website visitors and generate interest about certain topics.  Website polling can be programmed such that real-time e-mail alerts advise of when new responses to the online poll are added.

 

 

 

 

Sample Online Poll f

source: www. Networksolutions.com

 

Source of definitions and images:  http://www.networksolutions.com