When it comes to getting young people to visit your website,
textual content just doesn't cut it - there are few things that
they want to read articles about, and they certainly don't want
to read articles every day. They like to talk to each other, but
they'll often cause trouble if you let them, not to mention
scaring off any older visitors you might have with their
questionable grammar. Really, if you want young people to pay
you a visit, you need things that work consistently: quizzes and
other kinds of games.
All About Quizzes
Kids just can't get enough quizzes: the reasons why are a
mystery, but it's true. They think it's great fun to answer
questions about yourself only to be told something like "you're
60% goth - that's more goth than 83% of the people who've taken
this quiz so far!" What's more, not only do they love taking
quizzes, but they love making them for each other as well. It's
got to the point where any site offering them the facility to
create their own quizzes becomes an overnight hit.
So why the popularity? A big factor in the whole thing is that
it's self-perpetuating: every quiz they complete will give them
some HTML for linking to it from their blog, as well as a button
to email their results to their friends. Add to this the fact
that kids who've created a quiz of their own will obviously want
to send it to everyone to know, and you're generating a lot of
traffic.
Imagine one kid making a quiz, and sending it to their friends.
Out of these friends, maybe five would send their results to
their friends, and maybe two would make a quiz of their own.
Four of the five invited friends take the quiz, and maybe one
goes on to make one. The two who made one of their own send it
to all their friends. On and on it goes, like a chain letter (or
its modern cousin, the chain email) - it's unstoppable.
Offering Games
Taking it to the next level, you can offer games to your
visitors. Games have the advantage that they appeal to young
visitors, but they also appeal to some older ones as well - you
don't limit yourself to being a kids' website quite as much as
you do with quizzes. The downside of games, of course, is that
you have to produce them, or pay someone to produce them - it's
not that expensive, but you need to have good ideas if you want
your games to get popular.
What's the best format to offer games in? The answer, without a
doubt, is Flash. It's installed on the overwhelming majority of
computers, and lets you create appealing cartoonish graphics
without your game running too slowly. Java, for comparison, is
intended for more technical users - not only do Java games tend
to look dull, but they also make the user's computer slow to a
crawl, not to mention being more likely to just plain not work.
If a user doesn't have Flash, then they can install it as easily
as clicking 'Yes'. Installing Java and other systems tends to be
significantly more involved.
The next thing you'll be wondering, of course, is what kind of
games are popular. The answer is just about anything, as long as
it's original. If you're trying to build a big game, you should
make it extensible in the style of Runescape (
www.runescape.com)
or Habbo Hotel (
www.habbohotel.com) - it should be something you
could literally play all day without getting bored.
For short games, good versions of classics are always popular if
you want a steady trickle of traffic long-term, but if you want
a short-term burst of traffic then you might want to look at
something topical: humorous games about current events are
surprisingly appealing across age ranges, but have a limited
shelf life. If you want more significant long-term traffic, then
an excellent area to look at is innovative puzzle games: if you
can come up with something simple but addictive in the style of
PopCap Games (
www.popcap.com), you'll have people coming back
for a long time to come.
About the author:
Information supplied and written by Lee Asher of Eclipse Domain
Services
Domain Names, Hosting, Traffic and Email Solutions.
