It has been a cheap, effective marketing mechanism for the likes of Jeff Smith, guitarist for a suburban Washington, D.C., pop band, who uses his Web site to play song samples and offer the band's CDs through the mail. The downside is that attracting people to your site relies largely on word of mouth. If you build it, they might not come. The best way to lure people back for repeat visits to Web sites is to make them dynamic and intellectually challenging. Flow is akin to the reverie experienced when playing chess, for example, or while focusing on the challenge of rock climbing.
Some sites jump out as exceptional examples of how different the Web is from old consumer models.
A powerful program built into the site allows a search for recordings by artist, title and key words. The program also tells about an artist's musical influences and lists other performers in the same genre. Another surprisingly popular site is the Federal Express page. Customers can track their FedEx shipments traveling through the system by typing in the package receipt number. Although tracking a parcel sounds like geeky fun at best, FedEx exerts a curious pull precisely because it is free, utilitarian, dynamic in a gamelike way and consumer self-directed.