Why is Web 2.0 important for corporate websites
A recent article in the SMH titled It’s web take 2.0 confirms what we have been telling our clients for a very long time. When considering your next web design project or the upgrade of your current website, it is important to keep in mind the differences and advantages of a Web 2.0 website.
The article discusses the latest Web 2.0 technologies and various innovative companies and organizations which have taken the initiative and developed a competitive edge by taking on such Web 2.0 technologies within their company.
In a hope to explain the various Web 2.0 technologies, this blog is aimed at outlining the features discuss in the article and how they are beneficial to a business or an organization.
What is a Swicki and Wiki?
A Swicki is a community powered search engine, that learns and tailors itself to the needs and wants of a community (Eurekster).
Examples:
Imaging Associates - The Swicki attracted a community of professional digital photographers to the website.
Healthy Recipes – One of the top rated Swicki’s on Eurekster website.
A Wiki is defined as a website that allows users to add and update content collectively. The most famous and successful wiki is of course Wikipedia.
How is a Swicki or a Wiki potentially beneficial to a website?
Image Associates is an illustration of how small businesses are taking the advantages of the Internet as an effective marketing tool, leveling the playing field against many large Australian businesses who are still struggling to realize the real benefits of marketing on the web.
By offering a Swiki on their website Image Associates effectively doubled their website traffic.
Communication
Wikis allow organizations to communicate with each other. Information is often lost or hidden away in file servers, email or intranets. Wikis offer an effective tool to allow teams to communicate with each other.
Currently the marketing team of WWF is using a Wiki to share information and is looking at expanding it across the whole organization. Similarly Wiliam has developed its very own wiki to ensure the various teams across the organization continue to successfully knowledge share the vast amount of information.
Collaboration
Wikis also encourage collaboration, imagine the significant amount of knowledge and information that is lost when an employee leaves or the difficulties in document management. Wikis can be effective in any organization, offering one central place for employees to share information.
Within Wiliam we have successfully implement Wikis for developers to share the latest development techniques and trends, the Sales team often use the Wiki to collaborate on strategies and maintain up to date competitor analysis.
Wikis are a great tool to ensure that the knowledge within a company is always up to date and easily accessible to all members of the company.
What about social media otherwise known as social networking!
Many large corporate companies fail to consider the benefits and advantages of social media and social networking. The potential benefits include:
- Increase in ‘organic’ traffic to the website
- Increase customer retention and encouraging users to return
- Ability to build brand and awareness
- Encourage customers to share the corporate website with friends and in turn promote the company. Kind of like ‘word of mouth’ but in this case ‘Internet word of mouth’.
Refering to an survey by iProspect, social networking is a great technique to target a specific audience or for a specific purpose. The survey results revealed that following:
- Del.icio.us, Yahoo Answers and MySpace were effective in driving traffic. Notable mentions also included YouTube, LinkedIn and Amazon.
- YouTube, MySpace and LinkedIn were effective in building brand awareness
- Yahoo Answers was most successful in influencing purchase decisions
- Amazon was by far the most successful website in directly selling a product.
The article Brand Building and Web 2.0 explains the capabilities of social media to improve brand awareness.
One of the techniques Wiliam often use with clients who embrace social networking is social bookmarking . Social bookmarking allows users to share, bookmark and tag articles that are of interest to them to various social bookmarking websites. Website such as digg, technorati and del.ici.ous have millions of visitors per day, and its often through such techniques that potential customers comes to a corporate website.
Social bookmarking is a Web 2.0 technique that facilitates the ability to share and reach out to potential audience.
Examples of social bookmarking techniques can be found at:
Don’t forget about Corporate Blogging!
For a detail explanation of corporate blogging please take a look at this page on the Wiliam website. The definition on our website states, corporate blogging allows businesses, organizations and governments to communicate online with stakeholders, customers nad the public effectively, efficiently and transparently.
We have discussed corporate blogging many times, in keeping this short we thought we would illustrate different scenarios in day to day business in which a corporate blog can be effective.
Corporate blogs lets you be responsive to your customers
Research has shown that the web is an efficient way to communicate and resolve customer complaints and issues. The transparency of a corporate blog, allows companies to effectively communicate and deal with complaints responsively.
Be active in communicating and finding your customers
Corporate blogs allows you to discuss relevant issues about your industry, allowing potential customers to find your website by not essentially searching for you, but searching for information that is relevant to them.
Implementing a corporate blog allows your website to be active in reaching, targeting and speaking to your audience. As an example Wiliam actively blogs on relevant web design, web development technologies this not only allows us to illustrate our competency and understanding of the latest web technologies it allows us to have far greater reach and potential audience.
Subtle promotion
Web users are sick of being yelled at by companies, most website go on and on about our product is great, our product is beneficial. It is difficult for users to separate and differentiate between your product and services and your competitors.
However a corporate blog differentiates itself from the traditional ‘in your face’ marketing. A blog subtlely speaks the language of the potential customer, offering valued advice and placing your company as the authoritive figure within your industry.
Wiliam encourages and has successfully developed many corporate blogs most notably Paul Lyons, which includes Web 2.0 technologies such as RSS web feeds and production of Podcasts.
Many large Australian businesses have yet to embrace the benefits of Web 2.0 development, however we hope that the features discuss here have given you an insight into the possibilities and opportunities a Web 2.0 optimised website can provide to your company.
