How do users keep pace with fresh content? Offer them subscription options

 

Let’s say there is a web site which constantly adds updates – site A. And there’s a web site which close to never posts new things – site B.

I visit each web site. What should happen after this? In my opinion, each web site should have a subscription option.

Case study – Imopedia real estate web site.

Let’s take site A – a web site which constantly adds updates. I should be able to know about the new content. The web site can do this in a lot of ways:

• Offer subscription by RSS – I can do a lot of things on such a web site if I have a RSS option – How to subscribe via email to RSS feeds?; but I need the web site to provide me with the RSS links; Imopedia has a RSS feed for its blog; however, the RSS subscription feature can be extended to other categories and types of messages:
• RSS for tags;
• Categories;
• Searches;
• New blog posts;
• News about the company;
  think of it this way – via RSS the user can subscribe to a lot of things on a web site; why not use it?
• I like RSS feeds, they allow me to choose my delivery option; but even better are emails sent by you – Imopedia has alerts like these: Vanzari de apartamente in Berceni s1101519, Vanzari de apartamente in Popesti-Leordeni s253036; the email alerts can be:
• Instant email alert – if a big news happens, you can send it immediately; or if an apartment with a very low price appears, I want to know about it very fast;
• Newsletter – news about the company, important offers;
• Daily digest – tell me what happened on the web site the day before;
• Social networks – you can offer social media subscription options; a quote from a previous blog post:

• For the people who want to use a general network, there is already Facebook; in there there are photos, texts, links, friends, locations, pretty much everything you wish;
• For people who want to chat and do quick posts, there is Twitter; links, small talks, links, small talks; in Romania, we have Cirip;
• Business people focus on LinkedIn;
• For special content, there are special networks:
• Documents – SlideShare, Scribd, Google Docs;
• Videos – YouTube, Dailymotion, Vimeo;
• Photos – Flickr, Picasa;
• For niche fields, there are dedicated communities (gardening, pets, decorating a house);
• For local businesses / people, there are local networks – in Romania Trilulilu,Neogen

As a good practice for the things above, Google has Google Alerts – for easy subscription with both RSS and email.