Web Site Technology Explained

By using web applications you can take advantage of exciting new technologies that increase customer experience, remove the need for many monotonous administration tasks, and make it easier for you to stay ahead of the game.

Push Content

Push content is a concept that is ideal for websites with large groups of returning users, such as news-based sites, or magazine style sites. It is particularly effective when coupled with an intelligent ecommerce system.

Push content sites essentially learn from their users, by using an artificial intelligence system. If you run a magazine style site about a zoo, for example, your site could be programmed to learn about what animals each user regualrly reads about, and about what zoo merchandise they buy, and when they return to the site, the receive more of that content, and less of the content that they are not interested in.

This reduces the time users spend needlessly searching through content that is of no interest to them, and presents them with the 'right' content straight away. The effect is to increase the customer experience of the site, increasing sales, and return visits, and reducing site overheads such as bandwidth.

Ecommerce

Ecommerce is a term used to describe the process of trading online. This trading can take many forms, such as taking orders by email, where the payment is then carried out in a traditional manner, such as by post or telephone, up to 'full' ecommerce activity, where a web application handles the ordering, stock control and payment activities.

There are a number of excellent payment providers (known as PSP - payment service providers), such as WorldPay, PayPal, and NetBanx, and you should choose carefully the right one for you. These payment providers, however, are only one part of the story. If you want to incorporate ecommerce into your web site, it is your own web application that should handle taking the orders and stock control.

Email Marketing

If you use your site to collect registrations of users, then you have an ideal database of interested people that you can keep informed of new products, services, and site updates by email. By far the most effective way to manage this is to have the newsletter facility built into your web application, this allows you to manage your subscriber database online, to match the content directly to your website, and crucially, to allow your web application to process your database requests, including new subscribers, unsubscriptions and tracking.

Remember, though, that email marketing must be OPT-IN by law in the UK. In other words, your users must have expressed an interest in receiving newsletters or email marketing from you for it to be legal to send them such items by email. If you already have a database of subscribers, but have neglected to ask them to opt-in, it is acceptable to email them once and ask if they would like them to opt in. Do not opt them in by default.