Celebrate web ownership
As techniques develop over the lifetime of the world wide web, we are achieving more and more for the web owner. Not necessarily a programmer, IT guru or even webmaster by trade, this person is nonetheless increasingly able to take full advantage of the medium's most interesting features. Some people call these doors opening “web 2.0,” but besides being overused, the term implies a static state, a plateau of achievement. What's most exciting about the developments in web technology, however, is that they are a continuous evolution, ever improving. Here are five trends web owners have every reason to celebrate.
1. Presentation layers
Simply put, websites are better looking than they were just a few years ago, and better designs carry your message much more eloquently.
Further, one steady trend in the evolution of the mechanics of web design has been to refine and place more emphasis on the ways in which presentation and content can be separated. This means that not only do you get better looking websites, but that with CSS, includes, templates, and CMS platforms, websites are made from the start with a view to making a possible rebranding as easy as possible.
2. Content ownership
If you haven't already, take a Content Management System (CMS) for a test drive. There's nothing like the rush of controlling an entire website for the first time, down to the detail, from an attractive, complete user interface.
Organizationally, there are many benefits to putting people in charge of their own content, from freeing up time in the IT department, to allowing swift marketing efforts that react in real time. For the single owner, it's especially attractive.
It's easy to try a CMS, most have demo installations on their sites. You can also visit http://www.opensourcecms.com/ and http://www.cmsmatrix.org/ for reviews. You'll be amazed just how much you can do without writing any code at all.
3. Analytics
There are a number of ways you can record, then analyze the visits to your site. Long gone are the days of the simple site counter reading a number of hits to a page. You can track a visitor's path through your site from entry to exit, get geographical statistics on your audience demographics, generate graphs with a single click and use that knowledge to react accordingly with new online offerings.
Some schemes compute hits from server logs. These are very accurate, but tend to be most friendly to technically-minded people.
Others, both commercial and open-source, work with code that gets embedded on each page, either client-side or server-side. One such system that has gained a lot of popularity is Google Analytics. It's not the most complete tool, but by far one of the easiest to use. People who run Google AdWords campaigns invariably will use Google Analytics because of the tight integration between the two.
4. Integration
Computers are best at handling mind-numbing repetitive tasks. So it's always smart to let them talk to each other when they deal with some of the very important, but very boring details of business. More and more, engineers are leaving products open with hooks to easily integrate with others. This includes online applications, such as websites, CRMs, learning tools, as well as more traditional business systems. Integration between your website and your other systems can free up a lot of needless effort, and even open up new possibilities altogether.
5. Syndication
As integration is your interface with business systems, content syndication is your open window to the rest of the world. If you run a blog or a news section, syndication can allow others to subscribe to your site feed and receive your articles as soon as you publish them. In reverse, you can publish material related to your site by pulling down content from an appropriate feed. Showing a lot of promise, syndication is still possibly the most underutilized online resource out there. As more and more feeds become available and the culture surrounding the practice of sending and receiving information in this manner develops, its future directions are near limitless. Its immediate applications today, however are very real for anyone either wishing to disseminate content faster or repurpose third party material.