Category Archive
for: ‘Web 2.0’

I’m borrowing the phrase “lightweight programming models” from Battelle and O’Reilly’s definition of Web 2.0, because it nicely sums up a number of technologies that have made for richer connections among websites and data sources, and for zippier, more interactive websites.

Far from the brochureware of Web 1.0 days, today’s websites generally serve up dynamic content. When a visitor hits a particular address, a site calls into databases of information to deliver a page custom to the particular user, the desired content, and a particular moment in time.

Back when the debate was between mainframes and networked minicomputers, Sun Microsystems rallied under the slogan, “The Network is the Computer.” By 2000, Tim O’Reilly and John Battelle were applying that slogan to the biggest network of all: the World Wide Web. They realized that the internetworking of millions of PCs, in an environment of soaring bandwidth, plunging storage costs, and more nimble programming languages, was the embodiment of distributed computing power.

Rather than try to segment audiences within a larger site, many merchants are launching niche websites and microsites to serve a single customer group. BirkenstockCentral.com, which has been a leading seller of Birkenstocks for over 20 years, didn’t want to dilute its brand when it branched into clogs, sandals, and shoes from other manufacturers like Keen and Chaco—so it launched GroundedSoles.com. Then, to supply comfortable shoes to people who are on their feet a lot, they launched ChefShoes.com and MedicalShoes.com. Finally came a site dedicated to
leather-free footwear, VeganShoes.com. The attraction of segmenting out your product line into silos has a lot to do with the long tail of the web: When search-engines and comparative shopping exposes the same products from myriad different suppliers, and many of those suppliers are unfamiliar names to the average searcher, then the merchant must do what he can to establish his authority in his market.

More powerful than identifying site-wide customer preferences, is truly homing in on the individual customer. Amazon-style recommendation engines have been joined by similar approaches from Netflix, which invites
customers to choose favorite genres and rate each movie they see, and then looks for correlations among movies. Netflix further correlates customers with those whose ratings reveal similar tastes. Yahoo! Radio uses its listeners’ own ratings to deliver more relevant playlists.

In Web 2.0, customers expect a more personalized shopping experience. When they return to a store they frequent, they expect to be remembered, their data stored for quick checkout, and products recommended based on some understanding of who they are. Increasingly, they gravitate to rich, interactive shopping tools that let them customize
their purchases, select and preview product options, combine elements, or personalize them with their name, gift-wrapping, and gift card options.

As mentioned above, web users can now pick and choose what syndicated content they want to view on their “My” page, and where. There is now a huge variety of syndicated content, as well as useful or amusing little applications (widgets), which can be plugged into any customizable page. Suddenly, blogs aren’t the only way that nontechnical folks can instantly create their own websites. Now crowds of platforms are available enabling everyone to build web pages quickly and at no cost. Google Pages and Squidoo are two such platforms: very cool, full featured, and fun, letting people create their own content and also able to hook effortlessly into widgets, photos shared on Flickr, videos on YouTube, RSS feed content, product search results on Amazon, etc. By syndicating your information, and by posting your own material at Flickr and YouTube, your online footprint may now extend further, to the personal sites of enthusiasts in your market.

Widgets are small applications that can be easily embedded into blogs and other websites. These are usually Flash or JavaScript programs, which can run wherever their code is pasted—it is easy to cut-and-paste to add a widget to almost any web page. Widgets run the gamut from daily trivia questions, countdowns, world clocks, calendars, to-do lists, cute animations, top ten lists, breaking news, mini analytics tools, and search utilities.

If your market lends itself to the practice, you can get visitors to subscribe to brief email alerts whenever a particular event occurs: a new blog post occurs, there’s a news article on a particular topic, a stock hits a target price, there’s a change to a particular web page, a rare item becomes available, or someone bids on an item. Social networks have seized on the friends “news feed” or in-box alerts to connect to members on or off their platforms.

The other big winner among advertising media has been email marketing. Not spam, mind you, but the responsible, user-requested “loyalty programs” mandated by CAN-SPAM. A whopping 83% of marketers surveyed chose email marketing to their house list as the most important advertising medium they will use.4 For most companies I’m familiar with, email is the most profitable marketing channel. It’s no wonder: your optin email list is a precious resource, a database of your best customers who have given you permission to reconnect with them on an ongoing
basis. They expect to be given relevant messages and some special treatment: member-only discounts, sneak-peeks at new products, access to exclusive sales. If you deliver on those expectations, and don’t fatigue your people by overmailing to them, your email program will be healthy indeed.