Interactive Tools

QuizMaker, the quiz creation, management, and display tool [example]
If you plan to attract visitors to your site using contests and quizzes, this tool can simplify your site producers' lives! Create quizzes and quiz contests without the need for individual CGI programming.

Using a totally Web-based interface with integrated documentation, QuizMaker allows you to create a multiple-choice,true/false, or fill-in-the-blanks quiz in a variety of Web formats (radio buttons, check boxes, etc.). Quizzes can include a variety of question formats, including graphics. New versions of the quiz can be scheduled to replace the old on certain dates; visitors can be barred from entering a contest more than once per day, week, month, etc.; quiz creators are prompted to include legal disclaimers if necessary; and complete logging keeps track of all players and of winners, and automatically displays winners on the site if you choose. Winners can also be chosen from the available qualifiers and submitted to the winner page on the site, again through a Web interface. Players can be asked for demographic and marketing data with a variety of requirement options, and player data is stored on the site and accessible remotely, but protected from the public.

Log-in system/guestbook [example]
Fully customizable user-registration and access-control system for sites requiring membership. User data is stored in easy-to-use format on the site itself, but protected from the public.

Community peer-review/annotation environment [example: Del Rey Online Writing Workshop]
Would your business benefit from giving customers or potential customers an envirnoment in which to trade information and provide structured feedback on each others' contributions? The community peer-review and annotation environment is a complex Web tool that allows an online community to share text material and rate, review, comment upon, or add to it. Material can be viewed by various ratings and criteria. Flexible tool structure can be adapted for many uses, such as for a peer-reviewed online writing workshop, a recipe swap area, or a formal collection and analysis system for customer feedback.

This tool can be used to create real value for your site through customer content: content that enlivens your site and brings visitors back again and again, or content that helps you learn about your customers' needs and create products that meet them. Consider these sample uses:

• A site selling spices creates a recipe-swapping and -critique bazaar as an added service to their customers. Recipes featuring one or more spices are accepted for submission; members can print out others' recipes, comment on them, rate them, and add their own variations (all online for other cooks to share). Membership is simple but required, and the spice company uses the demographic and marketing information requested during the membership process to make special offers by e-mail to members based on their tastes. Members rely on the site for recipe suggestions and return often to the spice company's site; encountering an enticing recipe featuring a spice they don't have, they order it from the spice company with just a few clicks of the mouse.

• A software company sends out a beta version of its latest product and needs feedback on its reception and any problems users find. Along with the software, they send the URL of their feedback environment and instructions for logging on. Beta testers log on, create reports describing bugs or reactions to new features, and read other testers' reports to see if they have information to add. The software company also adds its comments to various reports, requesting more detail or announcing solutions to bugs. The beta testers have collaborated on a set of unified responses that helps the software company more efficiently process their beta-test information.

• A publisher sends out early copies of a novel to a select list of readers, who are invited to respond via a questionnaire on the publisher's Web site. As responses come in, results are tallied and the publisher can view the cumulative ratings and answers to individualized questionnaire questions in real time, helping marketing staff and even the editors to plan or adjust the marketing materials and advertising campaign for the book (or even the book's storyline itself!).

"Concentration" style memory game [example]
A popular activity to add to a site promoting a product or service. Without individualized programming, site producers can create a variety of match-the-pictures memory games using customized graphics and sounds. Various layouts and end-of-game events make each instance of the memory game different. This Java applet contains integrated documentation and can be used by producers with no knowledge of Java. And site vistors love to play these simple yet amusing games online!