How Wide is Your Web?
Useful Tips to Help Align Your Business's Web Initiatives
With Web 2.0 Trends

By Michael Boswell

A business's Web site is purely a portal – a gateway to endless possibility, no longer bound by the parameters that restricted creativity and function in decades past. While this article may focus on strategies used in Web design and development, it is important to be mindful of the bigger picture.

Keeping Pace with Technological Change
Web technology is constantly evolving: In today's fast paced and technologically driven environments, Web sites are more sophisticated, efficient, and integrated than ever before. Designers can express themselves with more freedom and creativity, developers can build lighter and more efficiently, and programmers can now build rich, user-centric applications across several mediums with ease. These Web applications are becoming more than just utilities for a Web site; they are now extended to mobile devices, creating a whole new market for Web initiatives. With the coming of new mobile devices on a monthly basis, the boundaries of Web capabilities on mobile devices are almost obsolete.

The Web 2.0 movement is all about usability, personalization and most importantly, community – everything is integrated. These same communities that link friends and family together, have become crucial assets to business' global marketing strategies. Whether it's viral ad campaigns, Facebook fan pages, or the newly craved tweeting, compa are in the face of consumers and businesses alike, everywhere. Because the Web is constantly evolving, we want to make sure you are up-to-date on current trends and best practices to propel your business's Web initiatives.

Develop With Web 2.0 Trends in Mind
As part of redesiging you Web site, conisder implementing the following Web 2.0 design and development techniques:

• Flash still has its place for more advanced ActionScript capabilities, as well as rich animations and 3D renderings, but you might want to use jQuery when displaying a product showcase, case studies, or other slideshow media. Unlike Flash, which had been the go-to tool previously, jQuery is more accessible to search engines.
• A dimension width limit of 800 pixels for Web sites has passed. The new standard width in today's tableless builds is 960 pixels, as most screen resolutions can accommodate this, allowing for shorter scrolling lengths.
• Most Important, Consider Options Beyond Tables! - As Web 2.0 evolves, XHTML and CSS coded structures that work without a table format have become the best practice for Web site development. The advantages are:
  • Flexibility
    • Ability to develop more complex layouts and designs
    • CSS for multiple mediums (e.g. Web, print, mobile, etc.)
  • Visual consistency maintained throughout Web site(s)
  • Lighter Code
    • Faster page loading
    • Lowered hosting costs
    • No spacer gifs
    • Redesigns are more efficient
    • Redesigns are less expensive
    • Better for SEO
  • Maintenance
    • Quick Web site-wide updates using CSS
    • Global style changes to universal elements through CSS
  • Accessibility
    • Persons with Special Needs – Because of the structure of XHTML and CSS coding, information is presented in a seamless and readable way for assisted visitors.
    • CSS and Universal Browser Support – Practically all browsers in use today support CSS for controlling layouts. As such, your site will be compatible with the majority of browsers.
    • As a result of the separation of design (CSS) and structure (XHTML), it is also possible to provide different style sheets for different devices, e.g. handhelds, mobile phones, etc. This guarantees consistency throughout all mediums.

Social Networking – Get Connected
While e-newsletters and press releases are still believed to be among the more useful marketing tools, it's time to get connected. Bring your business to the face of your audience in all ways possible. Social Web platforms like Facebook and Twitter are the craze right now. These social networking tools allow companies to reach their audience with minimal effort. Your subscribers, who are already using these sites for their personal agendas, are only a click away from receiving updates of your business with minimal effort. These tools are the most efficient and quickest way to let your subscribers know about happenings with your company.

Some other popular and useful social networking tools include: LinkedIn, Digg, StumbleUpon, and MySpace.

So do yourself a favor, get connected. Create links to your pages on social networking sites from your Web site, and vice versa. Back-linking (meaning to have incoming links to your Web site or Web page) from these sites to your Web site also helps your Web sites ranking in major search engines.

Google Analytics – Keeping Track
Google's free Web analytics application is light-years ahead of its free competitors, and rivals all other subscription-based tracking applications. With Google Analytics' powerful, flexible, and easy-to-use interface it's much easier to digest your Web site's performance. This tool will allow you to customize your Web site for your audience more effectively and allow you to strengthen marketing initiatives, resulting in a higher number of prospects taking your preferred action step also known as conversion rates ... Results!

With the use of AdWord campaigns, you can tailor your Web site's landing pages to more clearly match keywords that are bringing your Web site the most attention. It also helps that the same company who own the world's most-used search engine is the same company offering tools to help search engine optimization.

How Wide is Too Wide?
As you are reading this article, you are probably saying to yourself, "Alright, let's throw out the tables, and redesign our Web site! Bring on Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and custom Web applications! I'm going to Web 2.0-ify my Web site!"

Not so fast…

There is a saying that I hear too often, "it's one thing to create the beast, but who is going to feed it?" This statement should be taken very seriously by considering what is involved in keeping up with current Web 2.0 trends that are sometimes maintained on a daily basis. Whether it's redesigning your Web site to meet new World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) tableless standards, creating a blog, keeping your social networking sites up-to-date, evaluating your site's analytics, or running AdWord campaigns (and restructure landing pages), these tasks are immensely time-consuming and require constant attention.

So before you embark on the Web 2.0 journey, make sure you have both the resources and dedication to see it though. If you do, your efforts could pay huge dividends for your companies marketing strategy in the long run.


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