iWeb Communities: Blog

This is 2009’s first day, and as such, I wish a great successful 2009 year for all readers and all customers of iWeb, on behalf of the iWeb team. As written previously, the previous year has been exceptional for the web, with its share of crisis, but most importantly with key innovations, revolutions & growth. For iWeb, this year is simple: provide you with the best web hosting services in the industry, with trusted, solid and better products and services.

This is also an ideal day to sit back and think what you and your company would like to achieve this year, a due exercise to start afresh with new objectives and new motivation.

Here are a few ideas to tinker with, if you are a web developer or programmer:

• look at traffic figures, and plan appropriate capacity for servers
• see if it would be easy to improve performance of the website, by working on the most immediate & easily fixable issues,
• install monitoring services,
• take the opportunity to update software you are using, or uninstall unused software. You might have missed a critical update, and starting fresh could boost performance of your server, with the same existing resources.
• do a security check-up of your server
• learn one or two new technologies from this list: javascript (see capuccino), objective-C, java (android), ruby (Rails 3), python (Google App Engine) etc.
• technology changes fast. So be sure to subscribe to the iWeb blog to get updates on new web technologies or any other new software relevant to the web hosting industry.

If you are a business owner or a consultant, here are other ideas:

• see how using web applications like the Zoho suit can save you money, instead of using desktop applications.  You can also use new online services for recruting, accounting, sales, marketing to capitalize on untapped resources
• see how web services like ning.com, Facebook group, pages and applications, twitter, or by having a company blog can provide you with guerilla marketing and promotion
• get metrics about your web presence. use web analytics (such as percute) to nail your most valuable customers, and focus on them to drive sales and revenue. You can also think about PPC advertising to reach more of those valuable customers.
• be up-to-date with latest web marketing news by subscribing to the iWeb blog

If you are into web entrepreneurship, if you are launching new web destinations and new web startups, here are a few ideas for 2009:

• Get real now and find paying customers. Focus on providing services to customers that will save them money, make them more productive, or get them immediate returns. Do not hesitate to differentiate and nail a niche where you will excel, instead of wasting resources into trying to capture entire markets.
• Track metrics, such as monthly revenues per member, cost of acquisition, viral loop coefficient, etc
• be lean, capitalize on rapid development and user-centric development
• keep an eye on growing markets: mobile (iPhone & Android), social platforms (facebook , twitter & associates), Asia (china and south-east asia), etc.
• Be up-to-date with latest tech news by subscribing to the iWeb blog (of course)

If you have any other ideas or resolutions for 2009, don’t hesitate to share with other readers in the comments area.

(Image Credits: Melbourne New Year’s Eve Fireworks)