By visiting a number of sites, youll probably be quick to notice that many of their web designs include Whats New pages or sections within other pages of the website design such as the home page. These sections are becoming increasingly popular among web designers as theyre an easy way to keep the content of your websites design fresh and informative. These sections are frequently complimented by Whats New on This Site sections or pages, which also allow for fresh content, and keep visitors interested in returning to the site to find out whats happening.

It has been proven through the number of visitors and other traffic statistics that any pages that highlight their newest additions to the site will experience increased traffic likely due to a great deal of returning traffic. Even if there are links to the different parts of the site where the changes will have occurred, having those changes stand out on the home page or with their own pages increases their visibility, creating greater interest through the larger number of people who notice that something new is available.

Remember that just because the amount of traffic increases on your site, it doesnt necessarily mean that the number of unique visitors to your site has increased. It could mean that you are generating a large number of return visitors. This is great if you want to ensure that your buying customers dont forget about you. It helps to make certain that when your clients think about the type of product or service that you sell, youll be the first business that comes to mind. This is among the best kind of marketing that you can achieve.

So how do you know if a whats new section is for you? Consider the following qualifications that would make your site design a good candidate for a whats new section or page.

Your content is always being updated, changed, or altered in some way
Your site contains a very large number of different pages

If your page consists only of a main page as well as reciprocal links or perhaps a guestbook or feedback form, and perhaps a few small sub-pages, then a whats new page is likely more work than its worth, because it wont offer much real benefit to your visitors.

However, with many pages, or pages that are constantly growing or changes, this section will be a wonderful way to flag whats new so that the visitors can head directly to the fresh stuff that theyre looking for, without having to search through the site or simply give up before finding what theyre looking for.

However, remember that even if your site doesnt change too much, as long as its large enough, you can still use a whats new-type section to highlight the sub-pages that are most popular on your site. If anything, this will provide a much easier navigation through your site. Simply change the name of whats new to something more practical, such as Popular Pages or Featured Pages.

Remember that the main point of a whats new section is just to make the lives of your visitors easier as they navigate your site. A web user simply wont search a full website to see if anything just happens to be new. Nor will they look for very long to find what they want if they havent found it in the first couple of clicks. Therefore, use this as a tool to keep your visitors satisfied with the ease of navigation of your site.

Within the whats new section, you can write whatever you want, but the important thing is to make sure that whatever you say displays the latest changes, additions, features, or information offered by your site. Remember that your visitors arent going to use the whats new section to its full potential, but will simply use it for what attracts their attention the most. Its just a quick way to get there.

A whats new section is great for those people who have found your site, and those who intend to return. It makes the site much easier to use, and is very pleasant to see upon landing on the home page. Just make sure that your site is large enough to make it worth the effort.

Copyright 2006 Mark Nenadic