iWeb Communities: Blog

Looking at growing websites like digg or new start-ups like Friendfeed, it struck me how active those communities can be, with their users apparently plugged in 24 hours a day, and submitting a never-ending flow of information, and users challenging each other to bring new witty comments or content. Trend-setters have dubbed these websites as the future of the Internet, so I have taken the opportunity to analyze why these services are growing and generating interest from their users.

We can see at the same time legacy media empires like the Tribune or the New York Times having trouble converting their business models to the Internet. They are converting their content to a web format, but they have trouble getting enough revenues comparable to their print business.

Here’s a comparison of different media, their format, and their uniqueness:

As you can see, each kind of medium has its pros and cons. The strength of print (newspapers and books), and television are known, it’s just now that we are completely aware of the advantages of the Internet. Summed up from the table, the Internet has very high interactivity, real-time delivery of information, small tidbits of information, very high collaboration potential, and low barriers of entry. One aspect of the Internet that is still being dealt with is the design of sustainable business models.

In practice, Wordpress, friendfeed, youtube, facebook, RSS feeds are direct implementations of the characteristics described in the previous paragraph. This is what the internet is for, and ultimately, we will see more of these services in the future. If you are running a website, you should have a close look at those, and try to get advantage of the Internet’s uniqueness.

In the same way that web site designers must spend time to design sites which take advantage of the Internet’s uniqueness and its strengths, web entrepreneurs should also take the time to design new business models, native to the web, which take advantage of the the Internet’s strenths.

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)

A team of “security researchers” has announced they managed to issue false SSL certificates by using a md5 vulnerability. This was announced publicly at a hackers’ conference today in Berlin, with full details disclosed here

They were able to do so with a known vulnerability for md5 hash functions, and used an array of 200 PS3s to create a false SSL certificate. The PlayStation 3 was used because of its Cell micro-processor and vector calculations abilities, making it ideal for brute force attacks like this.

This means the SSL protection advertised by banks or ecommerce websites are now rendered compromised.

If you purchased an SSL certificate from RapidSSL or FreeSSL (one of the “cracked” SSL providers), you must take steps to verify the integrity of your servers, even if it’s highly unlikely that a hacker will find the resources to gather 200 PS3s overnight to get advantage of this vulnerability. Look for instance for a provider which uses SHA-1 message authentication, instead of md5

The marketing department of iWeb attended the Google Analytics Seminars for Success by Justin Cutroni, the 8th and 9th of December. One of the seminar’s advantage was to cover the beta features of Google Analytics, such as advanced segmentation of visitors.

According to Justin Cutroni, “if you don’t segment your visitors, you’re doomed”. Segmentation is one of the most important key tool in understanding web traffic. The new beta features of Google Analytics, Advanced Segmentation and Custom Reports, allows you to create subsets of traffic, and generate custom reports according to 6-7 (and more) dimensions and metrics, knowing that dimensions apply to qualitative data (type of browser, page kind, title of page, action taken by user, connection speed…) and metrics apply to quantitative data (pageviews, length of visit, bounces, unique visits, new vs old visit etc.)

For instance, the new beta features will allow you to get reports such as:

• What is the percentage of visitors from Montreal, Canada, who come to the website, through Google, and stays more than 2 min
• Comparison of key performance indicators (visits, objectives, sales) by hours of the day

See Previous Tips:

• Web Marketing, Tip #2: Transactions Tracking
• Web Marketing, Tip #1: Tracking Web Campaigns

Technologies come and go, in electronics, in engineering, in heavy industries. If you follow the news, clean technology such as tesla electric cars, the hadron collider, or new aeroplanes like the SpaceShipOne were hot this year. But if we sum up what has been going on in 2008, the Internet is by far the most exciting technology. It’s the only field that went through several revolutions, brought brand new and real usages in mainstream society, and even experienced downturns, all within the same year. 

Here are 12 top trends in the Internet which prove why the Internet is the most exciting technology this year:

1. Revolutionary use of the Internet in the 2008 US presidential election

Barack Obama and his team created the first ever political campaign in history which entirely leveraged the internet as a policital medium. By using a social network to rally partisans and connect local communities on his website, by using viral videos, twitter, facebook and myspace, Barack Obama demonstrated to americans and to the whole world how a 21st century political campaign should be run, by using the most modern tools. Expect other politicians, non-profit organisations, and lobbyists to follow Barack Obama’s path and leverage the Internet in the same way. 

2. Real-time Video Goes Mainstream

2007 was the year of youtube and youtube clones. 2008 was the year of real-time video streaming websites: Justin.tv, ustream.tv, Qik, etc. We have on our minds the unfortunate live suicide on justin.tv, but these new tools also bring new uses such as real-time coverage of conferences, new usages by podcasters and video-bloggers. On ustream for instance, viewers can ask questions to the show’s host in real-time, opening new dynamics and models for shows. 

3. The year “web2.0″ dies

Prior to the summer of 2008, we had “celebrities” like Michael Arrington, Jason Calacanis, Robert Scoble idolizing TechCrunch, web2.0, mashups, Facebook applications, and fashionable startups like cuil or seesmic. Now, all we hear now is layoffs, crashing valuations, and the very same Michael Arrington telling startups that the party is over, a correction which is probably earned.

4. Web Applications brings Web Engineering

Here are 3 different developments in 2008, which are closely tied:

• New web browsers, such as Firefox 3.0 and Google Chrome, were released this year, with Google Chrome seen as Google’s operating system, where their products could be run and trusted by users. 
• Frameworks have also matured in 2008, with cakephp, django, ruby on rails, zend, merb which rose as the ideal tool for quick web development, with higher productivity, and bring tools such as suite tests, ORMs, open source methodologies, profilers, agile development, integration with javascript libraries such as prototype or jquery.
• Web applications matured in 2008, offering solid alternatives to companies wanting to switch from desktop applications. Zimbra, 37Signals, Google Apps, Salesforce, SugarCRM, and many other web startups are now offering productivity applications, CRMs, project management, finance, or collaboration software.

Those 3 different movements have a created a whole new category for software engineering, web engineering, and I won’t be surprised to see complete web engineering courses offered in 2009 in colleges and universities. 

5. The Mobile Revolution: the iPhone and Android

The Apple Application Store is without question a major innovation in 2008. It was the first time a company managed to offer a compelling platform for developers, with easy distribution, no hassle on testing on multiple devices, and clear delivery. The iPhone is a game-changer and all other cell phones, such as BlackBerry, Nokia, Sony-Ericssons are now compared to the iPhone. While new, Android is also very promising, because of its openess and will make Apple and Google compete for better platforms, for the benefit of customers.

6. Virtualized hardware for web developers

In the same sense that we’ve got now applications somewhere in the Internet, virtualization has grown tremendously this year, giving web developers the option of having hardware not on a real server, but somewhere in some data center. Virtualization brings on-demand, cheap, and flexible resources, with an entire industry of providers, products, consultants and services created in less than a year.

7. The Omnipresence of social platforms

While “web2.0″ has died in itself (see point 3), there’s one technology which is here to stay: social platforms. Facebook was again for 2008 the fastest growing website. For instance, it’s used by more than 75% of Canadians, and words like “Facebook friend” or sharing pics on Facebook are now common, even for the most un-connected of your friends. 

8. Information overload; Bloggers’ Voices are now unheard

This is a direct consequence to #7. In 2007, if you had a personal blog, it was still possible to get the word out, and have an impact for a few weeks or days. Now, platforms and messages have exploded. Early adopters are joining twitter, identi.ca, friendfeed, facebook or any other social service. In Twitter’s example,  it has remplaced blogging. It also remplaced bookmarking. Attention span has reduced to 0, with blog readers commenting a tidbit on twitter, or on friendfeed, and then going the next minute to another url pointed by another tweet. Of course, there are still popular blogs, but all the popular ones are now backed by corporations, with full-time staff working on content creation.

9. Netbooks are In, and they are made for the Internet

I have written the first few lines of this article in a coffee shop, on an Acer Aspire One. It doesn’t have an optical drive, runs a less than satisfactory OS (Windows XP), with a maximum resolution of 1024pixels by 800 on a 9″ screen. But it doesn’t cost much, doesn’t weigh anything, and is perfect to browse the web on Firefox or Google Chrome. You toss it somewhere in a backpack and you’re ready to work anywhere. Products like the Acer Aspire One, Asus’s eee PC, the HP Mini 1000, or the Dell Inspiron Mini 9 are the fastest growing hardware segments for laptops, and brings new usages for mobile workers, telecommuters and students.

10. Application Platforms and APIs for Every Website

This year, we’ve seen Facebook Apps (again), Salesforce App Exchange, myspace, the new LinkedIn business  applications, and new initiatives like Facebook Connect, Friend Connect for Google, Myspace Data Availability. Those platforms and APIs show the future of the web, where every website will have an API for third-party web services which can re-use the data in a novel way. If you run a website, think on how you can offer a platform. Twitter’s success can be explained alone on its very liberal API.  

11. Near-Death of the PC as a Gaming Platform, except for MMORPGs

World of Warcraft, Sins of Solar Empire, Warhammer Online, Age of Conan are massive successes on the PC, and one of the only reason why consumers bought desktops in 2008. Multiplayer Strategy games or FPS video games such as Team Fortress 2 are also still relatively popular. As with the other trends listed in this article, PC video games have each created their own ecosystem, with fans-created forums, artwork and communities. 

12. The Exponential Rise of the Internet Access in Asia

See Previous Article

If you sell products or services on your website, one immediate integration is transactions tracking, to track ecommerce orders and sales on your website. By tracking transactions, you can then compute total sales, return on investment (ROI), and then correlate them with other key performance metrics, such as sources, keywords, banners, and geographical information. 

In Google Analytics, the integration is done with javascript, and is straightforward to implement, and will allow you to show reports for the store, as well as individual reports for each product. 

See Also:

• Web Marketing, Tip 1: Tracking Web Campaigns

For the upcoming week, we will be publishing a daily series about web marketing and web analytics, with shorts and focused articles for webmasters wanting to know tips and advances usage of Google Analytics. iWeb is an expert user of Google Analytics and Google AdWords, with Victor Vozian dedicated to craft web marketing campaigns, on different products such as dedicated servers or managed hosting services, and we thought we could share our experience and knowledge with the blog’s readers. The series will use Google Analytics as the primary tool and example, but it also works with other web tools such as Woopra or Yahoo! Web Analytics.

Today’s tip is the tracking of web campaigns. To effectively manage a marketing campaign, you need to know the efficiency of each parameter, such as the efficiency of newsletters vs banners vs CPC ads, the efficiency of different sources (google search visitors vs blog visitors for instance), the efficiency of different copy or images, etc. Knowing conversion rates and other key data (such as length of visit) will allow you to improve your campaigns, craft better campaigns in the future, and also give you cues on how to improve your website and products. This goes by “tagging” the URLs for each parameters. In the case of Google Analytics, you can create custom URLs thanks to Google URL builder tool. Generate a different URL for each case, integrate them in your campaigns, and Google Analytics will then be able to segment the different campaign sources.

Of course, the more differentiated URLs you have, the more informed decision you can make.

Follow us tomorrow, to read a tip about ecommerce transactions.

If you are french-speaking, if you are considering publishing in different locales, apart from English, we’ve published an article entitled “Le Web en Français” in the french version of this blog, in the goal of discussing localization/internationalization.

Internationalization and support of different languages should be a question every webmaster or web entrepreneur should ask him/herself. English is seen as the de-facto primary language on the Internet, and we forget other languages which are spoken by more people, or which have even stronger history and background.

For those who want to setup a simple, no-frills website for them or for their small business, tools like drupal, wordpress, or joomla are often overkill. While they let you create product catalogues, user forms, shopping carts, forums etc., they require knowledge of programming and html, and they often require weeks in order to get a website running. 

There are also times when you plan to build a big web application, and want to build a prototype that can be submitted to the team, with functional buttons, links, and pages. 

If you just want to publish a page with your contact information, or if you want to sketch quickly a website, here are 4 Tools which will let you build a website in just a few hours:

• RapidWeaver is a desktop application, avalaible for mac. Users choose from a series of different templates, depending on their needs, and then add pages. Pages with blog functionnality, contact forms, text, image galleries are available, all in a drag&drop interface. You can even edit the code if you know HTML & CSS. A solution which is at the same time simple & powerful.
•  iweb is an application made by Apple, included in their iLife desktop suite (not to be confused with iWeb!!) It has the same features as RapidWeaver, and is made for users who want to setup their personal websites, with photos, ready-to-use templates, and a drag & drop interface. The drawback is that it’s hard to export your work to your web hosting provider, and files produced by iweb are generally very big in size.
•  weebly is a web application, with which you can create a website directly within your browser, with a simple and hip interface. You drag elements such as pictures, titles, or videos on the page, choose a design, and voilà, it’s done. You can afterwards edit each element, and then export the website. Moreover, compared to RapidWeaver or iweb, weebly is totally free!
• Synthasite is also a web application, where you design and create your website with the browser. Compared to weebly, you can embed a greater variety of elements in each page, and it has more default themes, however, weebly’s interface is easier and slicker to use. 

When developping and launching a website, there are many ways on how to manage and lead the project: using traditional waterfall development, following agile development methods, doing user-centric development, etc., all depending on what kind of project you want to do.

The waterfall model, as advised by organizations like the PMI,  where development goes from requirements analysis, design, implementation, testing (validation), integration and maintenance, is best for cases where the problem is known and where the solution is also well-defined. For instance, if you want to setup a personal blog or a website with your portfolio, you are most likely to already have in mind what you want to show and what kind of content to show to your visitors. Pick a software like Wordpress, ask a php freelancer to do development for you for a week or two, and you will have your personal blog running on the Internet in the required time. The waterfall model is also very good in cases where you want to reduce risks to zero and control outcomes & resources used for the project, such as in governmental web projects, or with bigger projects in banking or insurance.

However, there are cases, when you are building a new web application for instance, where the technological solution is not yet defined or unknown, since you’re researching, developing, and testing it with live users at the same time live. This is where Agile development suits best: you build only what you need today, flexibility is preferred to the perfection of the waterfall model. The promise of agile development is that as time advances, your development team will ultimately get to the technology solution.

But what happens if the technology solution is unknown, and at the the same time, the problem (=requirements) is unknown? Agile development can’t be used here, since it assumes there’s a product owner which tells the development team what to work on next.

This is where User-Centric Web Development comes, the next step after agile development. User-Centric development (also called Customer Development Engineering) relies on getting requirements and lists of new features from users and visitors of your website.

This way of development is especially suited for those of you who are launching new web “startups”, or for the readers who already have an existing audience, but who do not know what kind of new features to focus on next. In rough economic conditions, it also insures you have a website which totally fits your users’ needs, instead of guessing of what might work for your users and what won’t. If you have an existing forum with thousands of registered members for instance, and not sure what kind of features to offer to users next, customer development engineering is the best way to do it.

Before listing tools for enabling user-centric web development, you should know first that there are conditions before being able to follow it: you should be able to develop new features very quickly, usually in less than a day, and you should have a web software which is immune to defects, such as having built-in automated tests or being able to roll-back quickly to previous “safe” versions. 

Use the following tools to get feedback and work on new features for your website:

• Open an account at twitter: twitter or identi.ca is a great tool to start “conversations” with users of your website. Ask questions such as “What kind of features do you like next on our website?” or “What do you think of having this … for the website?”
• Start a product blog (you can start with wordpress), with posts discussing the future of the website. Ask readers to specifically leave a comment on the blog post, telling them that their feedback will be taken into account. 
• Use polling and survey tools such as fluidsurveys, with a series of questions about future features for your websites. FluidSurveys works best here thanks to its branching/skipping features, allowing you to get separate results for different audiences
• Use split testing (A/B) software which allows you to serve different versions of the same page to visitors, and which allows you to know which color, which text copy, or layout works best for your website. Google’s website optimizer does exactly this. It’s not exactly free, but the amount of data & information you can get is well worth the price of the service.
• You can also use tools which were made exactly for user-centric development, such as UserVoice. UserVoice gives you a user forum and at the same time a small tab you can embed on your website, allowing you to gather quick feedback from users, just by embedding a single line of code in your website

UserVoice gives users a total of 10 points with which they can “vote” on features they would like to see most on the website.