I was intruiged by a recent post by Jeremiah at the Web-Strategist.com about how the search box in a browser is circumventing the address field. I read this after sitting with a client today and discussing their mamoth 3.2 million page website. Third client actually, the first one had 100,000 pages, and second one has about 1,000 pages. How do you organize all that content?!

So here is an idea i’ve been toying with for a while. A colleague at Jufa Intermedia and I drew it out on a whiteboard over lunch one day. Should we develop it?

The idea is developing a CMS that treats pages as stand-alone pieces of micro-content. Here is the gambit: the navigation structure is dynamically created, and the pages are easy to find using search tools. So you can both explore and/or search for specific elements. If you don’t know what you want but know the topic you explore, and if you do know exactly what you want you can narrow your search down rapidly. But wait, there’s more…

People don’t usually consume whole websites, they use parts of it at any given moment of need. Search boxes are the second most used navigation element within most sites, yet most site-specific search functions… well, frankly suck.

One of the biggest problems client’s have is
how they will structure their IA:

copy the organization’s operational structure

or

discover how the user consumes the information provided.

The answer is sort of obvious from an effective marketing stand-point – you design for the user. But it’s not that simple, because in larger organizations, the workflow of how content is published does not usually correspond to how the world consumes that information. So if you can’t create good content, then your “effective” user experience is for naught.

So instead of publishing to an area that you are responsible for maintaining, you simply publish for various categories (to seed the choice), you tag it and you tell it who your intended audience is from pre-loaded user-profiles. So you don’t publish to a part of the site, you publish to the TYPE of person you want to read the content.

The CMS will dynamically generate menus based on traffic patterns for each pre-determined user type.

It will guess at what a particular user is looking for based on what the user is looking at and how long they spend looking at it. That’s the first part. Second, is that each page must standalone. So you publish a page so it can be found using an onsite search engine. You can categorize and tag, as you may a blog entry. So instead of a site of pages linked together through a man-made and stagnant architecture, you effectively create a catalog of the content.

Imagine surfing a large site
(1,000+ pages) like you would looking for a book on Amazon.

You have recommendations based on previous experience, you have recommendations based on others experience, you have categories you can browse, and you have simple and advanced search functions for narrowing your results. If the content contains “web 2.0″ user-generated features such as comments, ratings, etc. then they can be integrated into the CMS as well, by helping rank search results, and offering new navigations methods.

So, any VC’s out there want to fund this project?

Bruce

Here is my third proposal that went in to speak at the Web 2.0 NY conference taking place in Sept-08.

What do you think? Which of the last three do you think will draw the most interest? (see the last two posts for the other proposals)

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What do a 19^th century Italian economist who accidentally defined a pseudo-law of nature, a post World War II American statistician who is responsible for today’s dominance by Japanese car manufacturers, and the 80’s poster boy for glam rock Boy George, have to do with Web 2.0?

Better yet, how can these diverse individuals help your organization leap frog the competition, create consistent and constant innovation, and drive your marketing so hard and fast that your operational people hate you?

So many questions! Come, listen, and participate. I may not have your answers, but I do have tools for you to use to come up with your own. Learn lessons exemplified by popular Web 2.0 successes (and failures).

Who should come: you are a bricks and mortar organization selling products on shelves, you are selling services at the boardroom table, you are a non-profit raising awareness, you are a pure Web company trying to manage its meteoric success, you are a corporation trying to find new ways to be nimble. Everyone can take something away and apply it immediately to their organization.

This talk can be personalized to use the audience to provide examples of how Web 2.0 success principles can be applied to your organization. If you’re interested in having me personalize the talk for your organization, please email me ahead of time with your organization’s background and I’ll see if I can fit you into the presentation. Take advantage, this is free consulting!

Tags: Business Strategy Innovation Audience Participation

Technical expertise: Low

Here is my second proposal that went in to speak at the Web 2.0 NY conference taking place in Sept-08.

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Total Mash-Up Web Design and Development

There is no point in starting from scratch anymore. This talk will show you how to create a web architecture for your organization that takes advantage of world-class applications. Mash and grind up together the best the web has to offer to create an enterprise class web presence so you can spend your budget on content and marketing instead of re-creating the wheel.

These websites:

• Are fully scalable; they will grow as your organization’s needs do.
• Are easy to administer – they are designed to be user friendly.
• Allow you total flexibility over design, layout, look and feel.
• Are Search engine friendly.
• Are primed for all sorts of marketing tactics.
• Can be constructed iteratively; get pieces up as you need them.
• Are cost-effective to build and design.
• And much much more!

Your project can range from a simple small business web page to major corporate rollouts supporting client log-in support, customer service ticketing systems, e-commerce, fund-raising, and many other applications.

Stretch your budget and impress your stakeholders – come and learn how to mash and grind at Web 2.0!

Problem: Attended the Web 2.0 Expo (April-2007) in San Francisco; a lot of great insight, but not very many speakers brought it down to the concrete and practical – how can SMB and enterprise use this stuff?

Let’s start with defining some basic fundamentals of Web 2.0:

Q. What is it?

A. Web 2.0 is about harnessing user (user = visitor to your website) generated content to add value to the experience of future users. So basically, if I interact with your site, it makes the next person’s experience richer, and so on.

examples: I write a review, rank an item, share a link, contribute knowledge, vote on a process, edit information (fact check), and so on.

Web 2.0 is about the power of the masses, building community, and self-expression.

Power of the Masses:
This theory is fairly straight forward – the more people you have who perform an action, the greater the ability to determine its true nature.

example: if 1 person rates a movie, you have no idea if it is good or bad, but if 10,000 people do, then you have a large enough data set that you can get a good indication if the movie will suck or not.

Building Community:
Now here is where it gets interesting. Web 2.0 allows for global congregation around any common interest.

example: So 10,000 people rating a movie should give a clear indication if its good or not – but that depends on who those 10,000 people are. Now if the movie is a cheesy horror flick, and the site rating it is dedicated to cheesy horror flicks, and most of the users are fans, then the 10,000 reviews now have much greater context – because the ratings are contributed from like minded individuals.

Self-Expression:
The final piece of the Web 2.0 experience is the capability of anyone, with no technical skill requirement, to publish anything they want at any time. Web 2.0 has put the power of the media into the hands of the masses.

example: so I, you, or anyone with an Internet connection, can, for little or no cost, publish or views, perspectives, or information on any topic we want. These are blogs.

Ok, so how do these all tie together?

First, anyone can be a publisher of words, images, audio and video.

The barrier of entry has been collapsed to zero. Off-the-shelf hardware and software can be purchased or used for low or no cost to create a message in any medium and launch it on the Internet. Where “mass media” had the only access to ubiqitous reach, now everyone does.

Second, mass media curated content only from a select few people, but now everyone with an interest (expert or amateur) and a passion to share that expertise can do so.

This gives greater perspective to the individual knowledge seeker – as there are many more sources to learn from.

Third, in a technically driven world where human interaction seems to suffer with automated services (Web 1.0), now uses technology to create natural communication and conversations – between individuals, groups, and of course entities (governments, businesses, non-profits, etc).

Next post:

The Tools of Web 2.0 – how to use Blogs, Wikis, Reviews, Ratings, Community Building, RSS, and other items. I will define what these items are and how to use them effectively.