After reading some awesome information on Linkedin about websites being web 2.0 ready, I’m now ready to take the plunge. We are in the middle of revising our website and thought we’d solicit ideas from the group on how to make it web 2.0 ready.

For example, it seems lots of web 2.0 websites offer something free (lower level service) then add on upgrades or paid advertising. This obviously becomes tricky with a service oriented business. Hence my question..

I look forward to reading any feedback the group members have. You are also welcome to send messages directly.

I know that web 2.0 is the big buzz word on the internet and businesses are trying to implement this on their websites. Web 2.0 is a concept and cannot be defined. Your website either has it or it don’t. You will know that you have it when others start referencing your site and coming back repeatedly. Your site is missing that main attraction. Your site is communicating in a one-way conversation, “Listen to what I have to say”, ”Here is what we have to sell”. As a web developer, I can tell you that building a website to be considered a good web 2.0 site is a challenge. If you are going for web 2.0, you have a pretty far way to go. I can offer some suggestions on attracting web users to your website and keeping them. I see great opportunity in your website. Add me to your contacts and send me a message if you are really interested in building a better website. If anyone else would like their website evaluated add me to your contact list and send me the link. I will give honest feedback based on my experience.

Tiffanie Tillman, we briefly reviewed your web site and from just a quick glance … its already a Web 2.0 contender. But, here are some things we would suggest for more appeal.

1) If you did or did not have “Flash” on the site, place a video/audio presentation on the 1st page playing once ( 30 – 35 seconds in length introducing your Services) with hidden or visible controls to play again. Please note, we did not have speakers to determine if you had one atthis time. Furthermore, Do Not Make the Flash Presentation Big. It should be a small frame and maybe close to the middle of the page. Reason: For PC(s) that don’t have the flash plugin will be able to still view the information.

2) You need to have a “Disclaimer” Page protecting your Company.

3) You need to have a “Privacy Statement” protecting your Company and explaining that other software used in conjunction with your site is not of your doing to some effect…well, it belongs to another Company etc. Furthermore, with these things…the Better Business Bureau could be helpful to assist you or BIE, Inc.

4) The personal information being transmitted or inputed into a database or email directly to you need to be secured in some form. Identity Theft is not a joke these days. We make this statement due to your Online Application.

5) We did not see any information that could be downloaded, but if you do have eDocuments, we convert all documents of our Clients into PD (s) and we encrypt them and make them Print Only. That is most important to prevent Identity Theft and Industrial Espionage.

1. Web 1.0 –> Web 2.0
2. DoubleClick –> Google AdSense
3. Ofoto –> Flickr
4. Akamai –> BitTorrent
5. mp3.com –> Napster
6. Britannica Online –> Wikipedia
7. personal websites –> blogging
8. evite –> upcoming.org and EVDB
9. domain name speculation –> search engine optimization
10. page views –> cost per click
11. screen scraping –> web services
12. publishing –> participation
13. content management systems –> wikis
14. directories (taxonomy) –> tagging (“folksonomy”)
15. stickiness –> syndication

THERE are many more differenting Web 2.0 factor…above are the most common ones visible in Web 2.0 sites

Hi Tiffanie, we reviewed your web site 1st page it is totally opposite to web2.0, because in this the basic things are

missing. In web2.0 we use particular font for all the contents and to indicate a word in bold it consist a particular font

and the links, click buttons, bold letters and content all are in the same font through out the website, but its not been

there in your website. And in web2.0 we have to use the whole page, in your website there is some spaces is there in

the 1st page, you have to use that space in future or its otherelse. Then If you have any more enquiries about web2.0

or you need any services about web2.0 and Ruby on Rails, please feel free to contact us at sridharan ontosworx.com .

We are leading service provider of web2.0 and Ruby on Rails services solutions.

These are some really good suggestions! Keep them coming, as I’m sure the tips are also helping others. I just thought

I’d add that we are already aware that our current website is not web 2.0 – hence the request for tips to make it we

2.0. We’re ready to ramp it up for 2009! All of your suggestions are appreciated and I’m pretty sure we’ll be in contact

with some of you shortly for the implementation stage. Web 2.0 can be defined using a scale of how much you 2-way

communication/interaction your site supports or permits. Every group/community will progress through the following

stages at different rates: Read content(not web 2.0) –> Vote or Rate your content –> Comment on your content –>

Add their own content (and then comment on each others) and finally EDIT the content (wiki).

You have to determine where your community’s comfort level falls on the scale above and then wrap some business

value around those tool capabilities.

As for your site I have a number of questions/considerations:

1. Do you allow your virtual assistants to create and update their own profiles, images, resumes etc…

1. Do you allow your customers to rate/evaluate the assistants they work with?

1. Do you allow communication between assistants?

1. Can customers or assistants publish content to the site – best practices, testimonials, contribute to a regular

newsletter…

1. Do you allow customers to publish opportunities that the assistants can apply to or even bid on?

All of the above require you to “let go” of some of the control over how the community communicates with itself…

Rockledge LinkedIn

The world was introduced to Web 2.0 technology as a way to connect with friends and make new ones. The business community quickly adopted Social Media as a powerful marketing tool. (SEO, Customer Communities, Blogging, Competitive Intelligence, etc)

Rockledge Myspace

The trend is strengthening. People are learning new, more convenient ways to interact. For example, many people prefer to communicate by instant message than by phone. (Maybe you are one of these people

How will this trend change the way you consult? How is this trend changing client expectations? What if you were among the first to offer tools that could create a company’s internal Web 2.0 social media management system? It would be like having a private Facebook for the company?

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Something that should never be missing from a business web site are testimonials. I’d sooner forget my kid at a public swimming pool as forget testimonials on my web site (well…almost).

Testimonials are simple yet powerful. They are quotes from past clients and happy customers telling future site visitors that doing business with you is a smart move. Unfortunately most web sites I’ve visited don’t have them.

Testimonial pages are often the most frequently visited pages on a web site. If people praise you, get in the habit of asking them if you can quote them on your web site.

Try to have the testimonials address concerns that first-time visitors might have, or highlight the main benefits visitors may be looking for in your company. There’s nothing wrong with coaching your happy customers on what kind of quote would benefit your business, but be sure to post the quote in their own words and style of talking.

If possible, have a testimonial signed such that future clients could verify the information in the testimonial. For example, a testimonial signed “Richard Jones, President XYZ Inc.” or “Emma Richards, Pasadena CA” carries more weight than a testimonial from “Bob T.”

Beware of errors

Nothing hurts web site credibility as an obvious mistake sitting right there on your web site. Here are some of the common problems (and some you may not have thought about).

Sounds obvious, but we’ve all seen broken links, grammatical errors, and misspelled words, all of which act as negative points against a web site. Errors will erode your credibility. Spell-checking is a good start, but everything published on your web site should first be read by someone besides the author for clarity and continuity as well as errors and mistakes. This practice has saved me a lot of grief.

Different Browsers

One other thing you may not realize: It is very possible your site will look fine in one browser but not in another. Your site should work correctly in all major browsers. If your site looks good in Internet Explorer, but not Firefox, a good percentage of your visitors may have a bad impression of your site.

Here are the latest numbers on what browsers are most popular.

Unfortunately, if you do find something wrong on one browser and not another, it will probably take a knowledgeable web designer to fix the problem.

Keeping the site up to date

If the year is 2009, and a web site says “Copyright 2002″ at the bottom, I assume the company has gone out of business and someone forgot to take the site down.

It is well worth looking over your web site on an annual basis to make sure there isn’t dated or outdated information causing visitors to question the relevance of the information they’ve read elsewhere on the site. Having a site with fresh updated content is not only a draw for site visitors, it helps with your search engine rankings as well.

One helpful thing, when keeping dates up-to-date, is a handy bit of javascript you can put on your site that will automatically take the current day, month, or year and display that on your web site. So if you want your copyright date at the bottom of your page to always display the current year, search for “javascript today’s date” in a search engine and you’ll find snippets of code that you can place on your web site to do things like this.

(this is also used to create urgency when selling something–”This deal ends midnight on !!” although most people aren’t fooled by that anymore)

In this way blogs, articles, and up-to-date announcements about company and industry news do much to show that you’re open for business and thriving.

Effective “About Us” or “Company” pages

Most sites already have a page that talks about the company, but many don’t allow site visitors to get to know the company through this page. If this page simply restates the services your business provides, it’s a lost opportunity to add a personal touch to the cold, vast void of the Internet.

This page could also be titled “About Us” or “Who We Are”. Site visitors who go to these pages are looking for something that tells them what the company is like on the inside.

Tell your visitors about the people who make the business what it is. Let them know how the owner built the company on hard work and integrity, describe the charitable work the CEO is spearheading, or that the company hosts daycare for their employees. Feel free to let people get to know your company from the inside as long as–and this is the key–you can supply this information in such a way that it supports the impression your trying to give site visitors (see Site Flow and Focus).

You can get fancy like Saturn, simple like Google, or funny and conversational likeBen and Jerry’s.

Evogear’s “About Us” page is a great example of a company page that speaks to their target market.

Remember: many of your customers are just as interested in what kind of business you are as they are interested in the products or services you provide.

Small to medium sized business need to embrace new technologies such as theweb, social media and make effective use of their existing technologies.

So does every business need an IT director or technology guru or is there a market for an effect IT technology consultancy?

Let me have your thoughts…

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Hi, I’m sure hoping there is as that’s what I’ve started doing! But in all reality, I think there is so much to be an expert in that a small business is going to be better off bringing in consultants for strategic projects than building an internal staff with every expertise. Medium sized businesses will probably need a mix of on-staff generalists in IT and expert consultants.

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Hi

Agreed. This shift will probably be accelerated with budget cuts and the maturity of Software as a Service technology. Consultants can help small to mid-sized business save a considerable amount in upfront costs, development and maintenance. Theweb is the new desktop.

Web Site technical or design issues affect the ability of Search Engine Spiders to crawl and accurately categorize your web site.

Has your company investigated the Search Engine friendliness of your web site?

Is Your Web Site Search Engine Friendly?

Ensuring your web site is not only user friendly but Search Engine friendly ultimately benefits your business. The Search Engine’s job is to search the Internet for web sites, determine the subject and content of these web site accurately and store all this information in their index.

Once this information is indexed the Search Engines use an algothrim to calculate hundreds of factors to determine where each and every web page should be placed in the results of Search Engine queries submitted by users.

Obviously all of this is a huge task, if you want your web site to rank well in the Search Results there are some basics which must be understood and adhered to, if you wish to keep the Search Engines happy.

The Search Engines Content Hunt

You have probably heard the terms “Robots, Crawlers and Spiders” when referring to Search Engines, these terms refer to the software used to Search the Internet for content and web sites. I like the term Spider, that little visual effect of many legs going in all directions is quite apt for how Spiders perform their duties.

How the Spider Crawls

The simplified version goes something like this. Let the Spider out into the web, feed it a link, and it will follow to the next link and the next link and so on, just like a trail of bread crumbs.

You Want to Help the Spider

There are some things you just have to get right to make life easy for the Spider

Content and Keywords:

HTML web development code is easiest for Spiders to crawl therefore, to ensure the Spider is able to access and determine what your web page is about, important content should be presented within the web page HTML code.

JavaScript and in particular Flash developed web sites are difficult for the Spiders to crawl and determine topic and content. If you want good Spidering stick to HTML for your content.

Allow The Spider Access

If you block the Spider he/she cannot access the pages to index them. A few things can restrict the Spidering of your site:

• Content behind user registration forms, Spiders are just not capable of creating Usernames and Passwords. They are smart but not that smart.
• Drop down navigation menus are not Spider friendly, if you must use drop down navigational menus be sure to include the links embedded in HTML text through out the site to enable the crawl. Footer are a good location for these if nothing else works with your design.
• Use Session IDs and Cookies settings cautiously, Spiders are not cookie enabled nor do they accept Session IDs

Careful consideration of you web site development should alleviate these issues and let the Spider roam at will, assisting you to bring traffic to your web site. The Spider is your friend.

Site Navigational Structure

The Spiders depend on links to crawl the Internet, with this being the case, the linking structure of your web site can have a significant impact your Search Engine Optimization.

Since a picture is worth a thousand words below is a very basic example of logical Web Site Architecture but provides the structural model.

Search Engine Friendly URL’s

Creating user friendly URL’s is also creating Search Engine friendly URL’s When developing you web pages consider the following guidelines when naming the files which eventually become your part of you web site address.

• Use keywords or phrases to describe page content
• Keep URL as short as possible
• Static URL’s are considered more user and Search Engine friendly. Can you read and understand what “&”, “?” and “=” mean in a Web Site address?
• Try to avoid numerous folders to store your web pages in structure with links not folders
• For multi word URL’s use hyphens – to separate words not underscores _ .

“Social media” refers to the tools for sharing information (aka: web 2.0).

“Social network” enables communication between individuals or groups (Facebook/Myspace, etc.).

To add another point is to consider “professional network” or “business network” which works on the same premise as ‘social networking’ but is focused on like minded professionals sharing business/professional information (ala: LinkedIn)

You can get more formal answers/positioning from Wikipedia-it’s a great resource!

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Great question!

I’m promoting and supporting my company using most social media and social networking and often have questions as to how best to utilize both. Tim is right; social media usually refers to the tools that are used to share information.

I use those tools to not only grow my business presence, but also how to combine social media tools with my social networking. Mixing business with pleasure if you like.

Any new business relies heavily on relationships; both social and business. My first event planning engagements came from some of my friends on Facebook and it’s growing from there.

No matter how you network online, don’t underestimate the value of “Word of Mouth” marketing. Your stock rises when someone put their name on the line to recommend you or your services.