You've bought a web application, now maintain and enhance it!

Maintenance and updates of web sites never really seemed to be a big problem in days gone by. Once in a while you would add a new press release, update the company page or tweak something here or there. However with the shift from web sites (static) to web applications (dynamic + data driven) and the move from web 1.0 functionality (1 way communication) to web 2.0 (bi-directional communication) the modern web application requires much more attention.

A Web application with Web 2.0 functioanlity can do much more for your business than its Web 1.0 cousin:

• It will connect you with new and existing customers
• Sell your product
• Reduce your support costs
• Increase your brands awareness
• Build community

However with all these new features it is unrealistic to think you can buy a Ferrari without maintaining it! The amount of upkeep is often challenging to communicate and sell to clients. Most of them are used to spending a portion of their marketing budget on the build with a few yearly updates and not a lot of additional promotion of their site. Therefore it is our job to educate then what has changed in the last 2-3 years since their last website redesign.

Modern sites and the content on them can be driven by any number systems including:

• Content management (CMS)
• Ecommerce
• Community and social media
• User generated content
• Rich media engine
• Analytics

Add to that traffic building and emarketing programs and frequent updates are a reality of doing business online. Investing in a dynamic sites means a commitment of time and cost to keep your web application up to date. Not only by adding fresh content, but by adding new features and refining your application to give users a reason to return.

As the web evolves and new features come along you should constantly be thinking about how to leverage them to improve and enhance the user experience, adding engaging content and providing tools that encourage interaction. Critical Mass have coined the term "Always in Beta" and developed a concept around that theme. And I think this idea of Beta pretty much sums up my feelings on the modern web application. It will never be done, and nor should it be. Make sure that you allocate budget and earmark time for adding to and embrace the rewards of going Web 2.0!

Product Information Management ... beyond traditional CMS/DMS

I saw a lot of cool products at the Internet Retailer Conference (IRCE 2007) in San Jose. However the one technology that resonated with me the most was Production Information Management (PIM). In this modern day and age when building a website generally it’s generally always on a Content Management Systems (CMS) platform which enables you to truly split content from the design of the site.

The one limitation of traditional CMS is that they are generally focused on doing page level copy very well, but don't offer enough flexibility and scalability when it comes to warehousing large amounts of product specification and data. Enter PIM.

PIM enables you to create your central data store or content warehouse where web copy, product information and specifications, files and assets are all housed in one place and are truly versioned. Depending on the package the technology lets you create structured or un-structured relationships with the content that is housed in the system via taxonomy. Adding targeted or personalized content to users becomes a much easier prospect with a PIM engine behind the scenes.

This of a system where every content item or asset is housed in a data warehouse that is truly version and can be shared with any number of platforms (web, print etc) via XML, Web Services or through an API and you have one very useful tool.

The two vendors I met at IRCE 2007 where Stibo and Catapult. The following diagram is an excerpt from Stibo's sales presentation of its STEP product. It really helps to show how a PIM software solution can be implemented and used to its full effect:

You can centralize it all in one place and provide a system to divide labour to keep things up to date and fresh in one place as well as enforce workflow. It also provides a framework to allow true de-centralized content, so you can offer direct feeds to suppliers, partners, dealers or other 3rd partys.

By truly embracing a PIM system you can throw away your old offline spreadsheet or Access / Filemaker database. And Forget dated versions of Quark, Word or other electronic documents that store product data. Breathe a sigh of relief! :)

Taxonomy Strategy Part 1

It seems that when most websites are built these days at least some consideration is given to traffic building by using any number of strategy’s: SEO, SEM and Online PR / Seeding. However that is all about getting users to your website.

So what consideration is being given to keep users their once they arrive? It would appear that if Web 2.0 is all about creating a more interactive user experience. Web 3.0 is all about providing users the right information they want on-demand. The answer? A Taxonomy strategy.

So what is Taxonomy? Simply put taxonomy is categorization of content that doesn't suffer the traditional limitations of content tagging such as metadata. It allows you to create simply or complex content relationships that grow with your website as content is added and categorized with multiple categories.

Why is this useful? With the amount of data being added to a modern dynamic website via a Content Management System, E-commerce engine, Blog or any number of tools we are seeing traditional website navigation has hit the limits of its effectiveness. The simplest example I can offer is when you buy an item on Amazon.com you are told "Customer who bought this also bought this". Behind this kind of web application intelligence is taxonomy creating those content relationships.

It provides developers another way to interact with site content and provide more intuitive and intelligent navigation that allows refinement and drilldown to the nth degree if needed.

Creating a sound Taxonomy strategy is not an easy task. First you need to make sure you select software for your web application that includes this as a feature, most don't. To learn more about taxonomy check out the following link on Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxonomy#Applications

More to come on taxonomy strategy at a later date! :)