Prestige Web Solutions - Weather on your Site

Beyond Video and Audio

Putting the weather on your site.

Another example of dynamic content that can easily be added to a website is the local weather. If you run a hotel, ski lodge, campground or other travel- or recreation-related business, putting the local weather or a link to the local weather on your site can make a lot of sense. Your visitors will appreciate the service, and this, of course, can help your business.

Adding the weather to your site is free, but it still can cost you plenty. Both Weather Underground (www.wunderground.com/) and the Weather Channel (www.weather.com/) allow websites to post current local weather conditions using banners and stickers of various sizes and flavors.

Examples of a banner and a sticker are above. While neither company charges websites for posting their data, both require websites to link back to the weather provider. Here's the hidden cost of linking to wunderground.com or weather.com:

The provided banners contain current conditions. Your local visitors don't need your website to tell them what it's like outside. They can look out the window. More distant visitors to your site don't care about the current weather where you are, because they aren't there! What is useful to your visitors, local and distant, is your local weather forecast.

Neither Weather Underground nor the Weather Channel allow you to post the forecast on your site. To get the forecast, your visitors have to click on the link to wunderground.com or weather.com. Once there, your visitors will see, in addition to your weather forecast, fifty or more links and ads for other sites, more than likely including some of your competitors'. While many visitors will return to your site after reading the weather forecast, web site visitors are known to be a fickle bunch and some will no doubt be seduced by ads for other web sites.

Fortunately, Weather Underground and the Weather Channel are not the only game in town.

You have at least two other alternatives that will get the weather forecast on your site. The first is the National Weather Service site. The current conditions will not be displayed on your site but the image on the left opens an ad-free seven day forecast.

Your second choice, weatherforyou.net, allows you to place on your site a four day forecast with a subtle, muted look that can be dressed up to go with any site motif (see the graphic on the left).

Unlike wunderground.com and weather.com, weatherforyou.net provides a forecast rather than current conditions. While there is a required link, it leads to a page with a seven-day forecast, a couple of weather-related ads and, when last I looked, a monster.com employment ad.

Clearly, weatherforyou.net is a great choice. Back to Top

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Prestige Web Solutions, LLC
P.O. Box 7966
Pittsburgh, PA 15216
Telephone: 412-499-3071
Fax: 412-499-3141

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