If you think that your site is effective just because it looks great, it is well organized, loads up fast, and even offers a lot of free information - think again! World wide web is all about communication and remember that effective communication is not about *you* communicating (that's called "talking") but about two parties communicating with each other.

So, how are you doing in the department of communication? And how do you encourage your visitors to communicate with you? Having standard subscription to your e-zine is a good start, but don't think that it is enough.

Here are some of the relation-building sites worth emulating:

• Visit the Tonight Show with Jay Leno and you will be amazed how many ways a website can communicate with visitors to dazzle, to charm, to ask, to entertain - and of course to build a lasting relationship! http://nbc.com/tonightshow
• Drop in to Mama's Cucina http://www.ragu.com Ragu Sauce's site invites you to participate, write stories, list favorite restaurants, share recipes, learn Italian, sign up for grocery giveaway - wow! do you think this can help build them good relationships? And does it help sell more jars of Ragu? You bet!
• And how about another of my favorites http://www.gevalia.com - Gevalia Coffee? It offers visitors not only great coffee and quite awesome dessert recipes. Just for trying their coffee, Guevalia will send you a free coffeemaker. And I mean a really GOOD 10 cup coffeemaker with a melita-type filter!
• Another way to keep people coming back forever is to develop a good, interesting CGI program. One of my favorites you will find at http://speeches.com - a superbly elegant site of David Slack, a speech writer from New Zealand. This sophisticated CGI script will write for you a powerful business introduction speech (or a great letter if you prefer). Free of charge of course. Quite awesome way to provide value for visitors by getting them involved in communication and at the same time presenting own professional talents!
• You don't need to be that creative with CGI. How about installing your own discussion board? Just like the one on Jim Daniel's site http://www.bizweb2000.com/wwwboard/ It is definitely one of the busiest networking corners on the internet! And you can get even the CGI script for free.
• Meguiar's Car Care <http://www.meguiars.com> offers a car care prescription service. Visitors key in information about their car, key environmental factors, and their level of commitment to car care - in response they are getting a personalized advice how to extend the life of their cars. Do you think they come back and even tell others to visit that site?
• Sears Portrait Studio provides visitors with a whole array of neat stuff. My favorites are personalized letters. Just key in the name of a child, name of the grandmother or other significant adult, add the wish and voila! - in a split second you get a cute personal letter from the Cole, friendly bear or from Santa (depending on season)- http://www.sears-portrait.com/
• Needless to say that if you drop to my own Success Connection you will have a few opportunities to have fun as well - with weekly MasterMind chats, watching my slide shows, listening to the radio, sending invitations to your friends, or signing up for my on-going free coaching give-away.

When you keep charming people like that and when you keep showing them your love and respect (plus of course if you are really good at what you're doing!) many more people than you expect will want to become your customers. Quite likely for a lifetime!