What good is your Web site if it doesn't have any
interesting content? You can't expect visitors to
come—or stay—if you don't have anything drawing them
there. Anaconda
Partners can help. The company offers a suite of
products designed to improve the "stickiness" of your
site by adding customizable content, even if content
isn't your thing.
Anaconda Partners' products can add weather
forecasts, news headlines, search features and more to
your Web site. Available as separate products or in
software bundles, the applications are easy to use and
produce professional results.
Using even a few of the applications can help you
turn a flat Web site into an interactive portal. The
company offers what it calls its Foundation Portal
Bundle for $749 (street). This package includes three of
Anaconda Partners' products: Foundation Directory,
Foundation Clipper and Foundation Weather.
Foundation Directory allows you to integrate content
from the Open Directory Project—a directory of hundreds
of thousands of Web sites-into your company's Web site.
The Open Directory is compiled and maintained by
volunteer editors, who also provide site descriptions
and organize the sites by categories.
Foundation Clipper adds news headlines to your Web
site that can be tailored to fit your geographic region
or your specific industry. They are generated by iSyndicate.com, NewsHub.com and MoreOver.com, which
together track thousands of news sources.
Foundation Weather lets visitors to your site enter
their ZIP codes to receive personalized weather
forecasts for their areas. The data is generated by the
National Weather Service.
Using the products requires a working knowledge of
HTML in order to build the scripts into your Web pages.
But the look and feel of each Anaconda product are
completely customizable—you can mold them to match the
existing color scheme and design of your Web site. Your
visitors will never even know that the information isn't
coming directly from you.
Anaconda's other products include Foundation Amazon:
Hot Lists, which generates hourly lists of the
bestselling products on Amazon.com,
and Foundation Amazon: Search, which enables your
visitors to search Amazon's shopping categories. These
products also allow you to earn commissions by referring
customers to Amazon.
If you want your Web site to take advantage of all
the interactivity the Internet has to offer, Anaconda
Partners is a good place to start. You won't need to
spend a lot of money or acquire a lot of Web development
knowledge to get started. And your impressed visitors
will never even realize the difference.
Liane Gouthro, a former technology reporter at PCWorld.com,
freelances from her home in Brookline,
Massachusetts.