Realizing that a rapidly decreasing parts inventory would soon lead to decreased store activity, we decided to pursue new revenue streams in the form of advertising.  Using Google’s Adsense program and other affiliate programs, we placed targeted ads throughout the site at multiple locations.  Almost immediately, the resulting advertising revenue outpaced the cost of site hosting and yielded positive net returns.
 
But in order to capitalize on the potential for advertising revenue, we had to drive traffic to the site.  Historically, the online store was the primary point of interest, but this would surely wane throughout the inventory liquidation.  So we created a set of interactive applications that would give site visitors something to do.  This included a user forum where registered users can share questions and information, a self-service photo gallery where registered users can post photos (and rate or comment on other photos), and an event calendar where registered users can post their own event announcements.
 
We also enabled registered users to submit their own links to the links area, to rate the quality of articles at the site, and to post product reviews in the store.  We enabled site users to customize their own user profiles, to view other profiles, and to connect with other users.  And we included a Polls module where users can share their opinion on the topic of the month and a Video Game arcade where visitors can play Sudoku or the most popular classic arcade games of the 1980s.
 
Some of the most functional enhancements of the new site are those associated with the new online store.  Whereas the old site required human intervention to calculate shipping costs and to process credit card transactions, the new site dynamically calculates UPS shipping costs as a function of package weight and zip code and processes payment through PayPal (with support for all of the major credit cards – including American Express, which was not available through the old SPS merchant account). We also set up the store to comply with Ohio’s proposed destination-based sales tax laws by calculating Ohio sales tax as a function of zip code.  And we programmed the store to keep dynamic track of inventory levels and to automatically remove items when the quantity on hand falls to zero.  When combined with the store’s easy-to-use administrative interface making updates quick and simple, the overall result was a significant reduction in the amount of time and labor required to process parts orders and to manage the store.

And of course, to ensure excellent rankings with search engines, we implemented search-engine-friendly URLs, created a XML site map, programmed a series of meta tags, and registered the site with all of the major search engines. 

Your site may or may not need all of these features, but we hope that you will visit the SPS site and explore some of the possibilities.