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Five popular software applications
and five things to look for in them.
Without software, the Internet would be a tool
reserved for data crunchers and programming
geeks. The rise of software has brought the
Web right to the fingertips of casual surfers and
businesses alike. Advanced applications make
communication, networking and collaboration
possible on a level that was unthinkable 20
years ago - even 10 years ago.
New software is constantly developed, while old software
becomes unusable. Caught in the middle is the website owner. It
can be difficult to decide which software applications or hosted
solutions are right for your business. Choose the right one and
business is booming. Choose poorly and you lose time, money and
possibly your livelihood.
Website Magazine is here to help. We examined five popular
software solutions and five qualifying attributes of each to consider
when making your selections. While impossible to cover every
piece of software in each category, our evaluation is based on those
solutions that are widely used or growing in use around the Web.
Our guidelines for ratings are based on personal experience and
trials, as well as feedback from other users.
Weblogs
Blogging has become an essential part of every Web
enterprise. It's the single most effective way to control the
conversation about your business and keep your clients
and prospects informed. The trick is finding a platform
that works best for you, while differentiating yourself from
the thousands of similar blogs in your industry.
A good place to get started if you're unfamiliar or not completely
sold on the idea of blogging is one of the free hosted solutions such
as Google's Blogger.com, Microsoft's Live Spaces and Yahoo's 360. Or,
even consider utilizing one of the offerings from social networking
giants MySpace or Facebook, where you can easily build a profile
page and start a blog at the same time. Otherwise, look into one of the
more sophisticated solutions. While many of the most popular blogging
platforms are free (open source) others are not, which for many
will be a deciding factor.
Outside of cost, one of the first important deciding factors will be
the system requirements. Making a selection based on the programming
language the platform is built on, the operating system and the
Web server can be crucial. If your enterprise program is in ASP and
you're familiar with the Microsoft server environment, deploying
Wordpress (best suited for Apache servers) will present a host of integration
issues and a sizable learning curve.
One of the problems with establishing a blog, whether customerfacing
or personal is that they are magnets for spam - a very important
security consideration. Fortunately, all of those reviewed below,
with the exception of the Expression Engine, feature built-in Akismet
(spam filtering) support or have a plugin available. If spam is a
concern, other anti-spam features you should look for include word
blacklisting, the ability to ban IP addresses and the availability of a
"completely automated public turing test to tell computers and
humans apart" (CAPTCHA).
Scalability of the platform will play a big role in your success. As
your business grows, so will your blog. Will it be able to support new
users? Do you want to enable public contributions, either with new
posts or comments? Make sure your blogging platform is able to support
new versions, security patches and updated features.
Ultimately, the reason to get into blogging is for the attention
it can generate for your business. That means it needs to be SEOfriendly.
For example, Wordpress enables customizable permalinks
- meaning that your blog posts automatically contain original,
descriptive keywords in their page names. Finally, look for blogs that
support categories and archives. They both benefit long-term SEO.
Review more information about these blogging software platforms
CMS: Content Management Systems
In the early days of the Internet, website owners were
required to manually code Web pages. While there were
several tools and tricks to speed up deployment and ensure
consistency of Web pages throughout a domain, this
process was and still is cumbersome.
The advantage of using a content management system (CMS) is that
workflow, the idea of moving from the initial creation of a document
to its final approval, is greatly facilitated. Overall, supporting multiple
users and assigning those users roles to help develop or manage content
makes deployment faster and your business' website more manageable.
In short, CMS solutions are all about facilitating collaboration
and making that content accessible publicly and privately.
Not everyone has the resources to develop a proprietary software
system or the procedures necessary to manage content online.
Fortunately there are hundreds, if not thousands of CMS solutions
available to help website owners. Some are free (open-source) and
some are commercial, typically available through a licensing system.
All, however, have the potential to make your days as a Web worker
more organized, efficient and successful.
CMS takes many forms but the most utilized (and thus most
popular) have features that have become standards - for example,
the ability to import documents, document change tracking and even
messaging features. So what are some other features someone
reviewing CMS solutions should identify as essential in their
selection process?
Not everyone working on your website will be skilled in the fine
art of Web design. CMS that offer a "what you see is what you get"
(WYSIWYG) editor are crucial to a consistent user experience. In line
with the document design are SEO-friendly considerations of the
system and the individual pages. The ability to customize individual
page names, content summaries and unique titles (meta data too) will
provide many long term benefits - namely website traffic. Overall,
the system's ease of use will make or break your online enterprise.
Another key feature should be document management. The ability
to track the process of content creation (creation, revision, publication,
archival and removal) makes CMS a worthy investment as it will
reduce the workload if multiple personnel are working on a document
simultaneously. Advanced systems will even provide "workflow
engines" to see who changed what document and when that change
was made.
Scalability is also important. The Web is a dynamic environment
and adaptability is inherent in good software. CMS solutions are often
updated with added functionality (and even security patches) that
you should be able to integrate quickly. From templates to plugins,
the feature set of your CMS should be readily available for customization.
If the CMS solution you choose does not come equipped with
built-in applications such as guestbooks, link management, personalized
pages or even forums, make sure that these functionalities are
available through add-ons.
Review more information about these Content Management Systems (CMS)
E-commerce systems
While you may be blogging for exposure, selling makes
money. It's the foundation of the commercial Internet.
And what supports it all for millions of website owners is
e-commerce software.
Operating a successful online e-commerce presence is one of the most
challenging aspects of running an Internet business. Simply put, ecommerce
systems are business applications serving commercial
transactions online. Of course, it's more complex than that. Consider
the transfer of electronic funds, supply-chain management, online
marketing, transaction processing, inventory management and the
exchange of data and you can see the need for a robust e-commerce
solution.
Reliable e-commerce platforms make a big difference in the success
of an online enterprise. As such, the back-end aspects of these
various solutions should be a key part of your decision process.
Reliability and security aren't buzzwords, they are imperative. The
Web host being utilized should support your e-commerce system
with parallel servers, hardware redundancy, and fail-safe technologies
that ensure availability and the highest performance at all times.
But beyond the technical aspects of e-commerce solutions, the
next most important influencing factor should be the experience that
will be provided to the end user - your client.
The leading e-commerce platforms share a common thread; they
provide a stable, seamless, user-friendly purchasing experience. The
design that is presented to users is, in many respects, as important as
the products you provide.
The best solutions also offer support for business owners to sell
their products. From coupons to special offers and discounts, the
capacity to automate these tactics should be important part of your
decision. When looking at the top e-commerce websites - take
Amazon.com for example - what do they have in common?
Personalization. You simply will not find a successful e-commerce
website that does not provide personalized offers based on previous
purchases.
Another key ingredient of successful e-commerce sites is the communities
they foster. When users can discuss and even collaborate on
products, they begin to develop an affinity for the online property
hosting the community. Loyalty programs are also an easy way to
develop a following and the solution you select should support them.
Facilitating consumption is another important part of community -
product information is vital.
The last, but arguably one of the most important aspect of the best
e-commerce solutions is communication. Transparency and openness
is not a dream, it's an increasing necessity. Selecting a system that
helps you send email notifications and manage clients' individual
needs is what will take your online enterprise from bust to boom.
Review more information about these Ecommerce software solutions
Email Marketing Software
Despite increasing customer distaste, ongoing legislative
threats and technological innovations, marketing to an
audience of targeted, opt-in subscribers via email still
produces results.
The only evidence needed to support the ongoing use of email as an
effective marketing tool is found on every email client - your junk
folder. While many end up in this wasteland, effective email campaigns
can produce big dividends. If it didn't, your inbox would only receive
the emails you wanted and you would never need a junk folder.
The entire email process should begin on your website the
moment when a request for subscription is made. Software helps you
manage this process, from the submission of a name and email
address to the importing of that data into an application that organizes
and executes the mailing. Very much in line with this "support
from the beginning" approach is scalability. While some solutions
cater exclusively to periodic, small- and medium-sized campaigns,
others focus exclusively on large-scale and frequent promotions.
Understanding the capabilities of your provider and defining your
enterprise's growth expectations will give you an idea on which vendor
or solution will accompany your business into the future.
Successful email marketing also hinges on detailed reporting.
Email service providers should offer detailed reports on open rates,
click-thru rates, and most importantly the deliverability of individual
email campaigns. Sending thousands of emails that all bounce back
will raise red flags with Internet Service Providers (ISPs), waste promotional
budgets and potentially aggravate future customers. Email
marketing software providers who excel at reporting are those which
have close relationships with the ISPs themselves and the technology
available to help you manage campaign data.
Your primary concern should be the success of campaigns, but it's
easy to get sidetracked and focus on the aesthetics of individual email
creatives. While important, it's debatable whether it makes much of an
impact. Some will argue that HTML newsletters work better, while
others only send text emails. Having the option to send both types and
support for both should be a deciding factor in your selection process.
Some providers even provide WYSIWYG editors and template suggestions
to facilitate "best practices" design for their clients.
Finally, email marketing software vendors should offer a high level
of support - both technical and administrative. Email marketing on
the whole is comparable in complexity to search engine optimization
in that it requires expertise in several areas to be successful; coding
and development, reporting and analytics, customer service and marketing.
When one piece of the email puzzle fails, they all fail.
Like most things in business, you get what you pay for. So, if you
are serious about the promotion of your online enterprise through
email, focus on paid services, as the others come with a characteristic
amateur look and feel.
Review more information about these Email Marketing software solutions
Forum Software
Since the beginning of the commercial Web, webmasters
have been deploying forums to foster communities. When
communities are healthy they have the tendency to thrive.
When left unattended, they are fertile grounds for all sorts
of wasteful marketing energy, not to mention spam.
Unfortunately, healthy forums have traditionally relied on countless
hours of oversight from the forum leader or webmaster. This is precisely
the reason that selecting the right software to power your forum
is so important. Choosing wisely will lessen the need to rigorously
oversee each and every happening at the forum, while ensuring that
your forum is active and secure. When choosing what forum software
to power your community, it is imperative to review server considerations,
technical requirements, the depth of the feature set and how well
it will grow with your online enterprise.
Forum software packages come in a variety of programming
languages such as PHP, Perl, Java and ASP. Selecting software based
on your experience with a programming language makes sense, as
does the operating system, database type and Web server. Choose a
solution outside of your area of expertise and be ready to climb the
learning curve.
Several considerations must also be made for the technical features.
Is your forum one part of a greater community? Is there a plan for integration
of your forum with weblogs or a CMS? For example, Website
Magazine utilizes Community Server from Telligent (communityserver.
org), a commercial-grade CMS that features weblog functionality, a
CMS and a forum. When a user signs into the system, they are automatically
able to access the various portions of the site. The result is a
more uniform Web experience, a goal set in the beginning of our decision-
making process.
Most website owners wisely base their forum software decision on
the feature set of the application. Each one offers different features -
from the most basic, providing text-only postings, to more advanced
packages offering multimedia support and formatting code (usually
known as BBCode).If you have never implemented a forum before,
choosing a no-frills version might seem appealing with the idea that
consumer use and administration will be easy. Unfortunately, all forum
software is not created equal - in the end, you'll be more pleased if
you select a solution that is expandable. Some important functionality
to look for includes the presence and depth of plugins or add-ons (for
example the ability to include a calendar or catalog) and theme support
for design changes and alterations.
Also consider the ability to create polls, provide private messaging,
user management restrictions (including group creation, forum restrictions,
blacklisting and IP blocking) and, of increasing importance, syndication
(RSS/Atom). A few other key considerations are security features
such as CAPTCHA support, word filtering and the delivery style
of posts; straight text, rich text or HTML.
Review more information on these forum software solutions
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