EPR Creations LLC

The State of Website Development

As a website designer and developer, I enjoy keeping an eye on trends in the marketplace and watching patters with my clients. The process of creating and maintaining a website has undergone dramatic changes in just the last few years, not to mention the last decade.

In the not so distant past, website design for a company was about creating static pages of information. What I mean by static is that the design and content lived on the same HTML page that was usually too complicated to be updated by the client. So, website designers would create a website and then be called upon for each small copy or image update.

What has happened recently is that a separation has occurred between the design and the content. The design is on one side of the development process, but the content doesn’t live on the same file (or website page) as the design. Within the design, code is used that calls the content (ex. biography, photo, links) to be loaded onto the page from a Database. Thus, the information doesn’t reside with the website designer, but is now placed in the hands of the client who can update and maintain their own content.

A website page that calls the content from a database is called a dynamic page. We have moved from static website pages to pages that are dynamically driven and able to be updated by the client via computer or mobile device. The page will look the same to the end user.

The main shift here is that the client has become the owner and editor of their own content.

This may seem like an added task to the client. Something they want to outsource anyway. But, here’s the key feature. If you set up a dynamically driven site for your client, you are empowering them. They now have a database of their own information that they will keep forever. Think of it this way. If you purchase an iPhone, you can load, update, and maintain all of the information on that iPhone. Maybe you want to update the case around the iPhone every few years to the latest design trends, but that iPhone will be yours and you will be in charge of what it contains.

Here is an image that shows this process in a very basic way. The client now has their own user interface where they can add, remove, and archive information in their database without knowing the first thing about database management. Those changes take place in a website Admin area and are reflected in the database. The front end of the website (what the user sees on his/her computer) then pulls this updated information from the database.

Similarly, as a website designer and developer, you can maintain working relationships with your clients by updating the look and feel of their website every few years. You can incorporate the new standards and abilities available. But that database will remain the same for that client.

This is a very exciting shift. As your clients continue to see the importance of their website in gaining new clients, making new sales, or promoting their idea, they will want to maintain a closer relationship to that content and will have the ability by maintaining their own content.

Websites for Small Businesses

In the last few years, websites have gone under an important shift from static to dynamic purveyors of information.  Static means that the information is placed online, much like an advertisement, and it is there for people to come and see.  Dynamic content means that a web page exists, but it’s content is continually updated by outside content relevant to the page, whether through Twitter updates, RSS Feeds, or Blog Entries.

Dynamic sites, as the word signifies, are exciting.  They are always changing, and they give website users a reason to return to your site.  If your website content is the same as it was 5 years ago, you are probably not attracting many repeat viewers to your site.  You are losing out on business.  You wouldn’t put up a billboard and leave it the same for 5 years, so why have you done that with your website?

The Atlanta Business Chronicle just had an interesting article about small businesses & their use of websites.  According to the article, most small businesses still have a static website and they do not have E-Commerce capabilities built into their site.  So they are not giving their viewers fresh content and they are not offering their users a chance to buy into their idea or product.

The Internet is changing so rapidly that you must keep your website and your content fresh.  For real estate, location is the key (location, location, location!)  With websites, content is king.  You must have good, unique, and fresh content on your site to be noticed among the millions of new web pages being added to the Internet each day.