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There is no getting around the fact that new media has had a dramatic impact on the way that websites are designed. A lot of people will tell you that impact has not been positive. Done correctly new media can be a great thing for your site, unfortunately it is rarely done well. Finding a web designer who understands how to incorporate new media will go a long way to solving this problem.
These days visitors to your site are going to expect more than just a page full of text, they will usually expect your site to be interactive. That means that you have to add new media to your site. However it is also important that you be very careful about how you are adding it. Done properly it can really improve your site and enhance the experience for your visitor. On the other hand if you do it wrong you are just going to irritate your visitor and cause him to go to another site.
One of the most widely used forms of new media on a website is video, this can be a great way to explain things to your visitors. Unfortunately a lot of site designers have gotten lazy about the use of video. They have realized that it is a lot easier to shoot a quick video than it is to write a page of text so they have tended to replace all of the text with videos. For the most part visitors don't like this, they want to be able to skim through the text not have to sit and watch a video to find what they are looking for. The video should be there to enhance the text not to replace it.
The other form of new media that you are seeing on websites is social media. This is usually in the form of buttons that allow you to visit the site owners Facebook page, their Twitter feed and a whole host of other social media sites. This can be a great way to stay in touch with your customers but again you have to be careful about over doing it. You will see sites all the time that have dozens of social media buttons. Not only does this look silly but it is counter productive. Remember the goal is to use social media to get people to your website not the other way around.
One new media feature that you really should include on your site is a syndication feed. The most common of these is RSS but there are others that can be used. This will make sure that when you update your site your visitors will be informed about it. Obviously for this to work you have to make sure that you have something on your site that people will want to be informed when it is updated. This is something that a lot of websites really struggle with.