let me start this post with the obligatory apology to the reader for having to suffer through my tirade on Web 2.0 and the hype that surrounds this not so well defined phenomenon.

So what is web 2.0??

If you refer to Wikipedia you will find the following:

“The phrase Web 2.0 was coined by O'Reilly Media to refer to a supposed second generation of Internet-based services that let people collaborate and share information online in a new way such as social networking sites, wikis, communication tools, and folksonomies. O'Reilly Media, in collaboration with MediaLive International, used the phrase as a title for a series of conferences and since then it has become a popular, if ill-defined and often criticized, buzzword amongst the technical and marketing communities.”

Quite often Web 2.0 refers to websites that use some or all of the following technologies:

• Unobtrusive rich Internet application techniques (such as Ajax)
• Style Sheets (CSS, XSL, XSLT) 
• Semantically valid XHTML markup and/or the use of Microformats
• Syndication and aggregation of data in RSS/Atom
• Clean and meaningful URLs
• Weblog publishing (Blogs)
• Mashups
• REST or XML Webservice APIs

Note: this post does not cover these technologies in any detail. I only include them as a reference to set a definition when using the term Web 2.0.

Some of you may be asking how you get Web 2.0 = 42. The answer is simple, if you have ever read or watched the Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy (the only trilogy I know of that consists of 6 books!)

42 is “The Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything”. 

Needless to say, in the story the answer 42 did not prove to be very useful to many people, so a computer was created to figure out what the universal question was that lead to the answer 42.

Some of you may have guessed by now where I am going with this. If Web 2.0 is the answer, what is the question?…or in IT terms, Web 2.0 is the solution, now tell me the problem.

This situation of Web 2.0 becoming almost the ubiquitous answer for many web developers leads to what I refer to as the Augmentin Syndrome. Augmentin is an antibiotic that became the ‘cure-all drug of choice’ prescribed by GP’s in the late 90’s. In fact, it was so widely used many patients would not even bother to describe their symptoms to their doctors, they would simply ask for a prescription for Augmentin. 

It did not really seem to matter what was wrong with you medically. Once you got your Augmentin everything would be okay! You have a cold, you need Augmentin, you have a gun shot wound, you guessed it, Augmentin was the answer. Now in many cases Augmentin was a great choice, however there were cases where alternative drugs would have been better for the patient, and many cases were reported where the drug was found to be completely useless for the ailment it was trying to cure.

I see the frantic swing to Web 2.0 following a similar line. If a website is a little tired and needs something to pick it up, then instantly the chorus of Web 2.0 enthusiasts can be heard saying “Whatever is wrong, Web 2.0 will fix it” and the world will beat a path to your website.

Yes, in many cases Web 2.0 can help, and yes it could well be a great option, but before embarking down the well beaten track why not dally a little on the less travelled detour and make sure the basics of good website design are followed first before heading down a track that may not lead to the outcomes you are expecting.

Like so many things in life, if the foundations upon which you build are not solid then it will not matter how good the façade you present to the world is, eventually all the flaws you are trying to conceal will become glaringly obvious.

So in saying this, what are some of the basics that need to be considered before following the well beaten Web 2.0 path?

First and foremost, what are you trying to achieve? What do the people who visit your site want from it, and equally important, what is it you want from them? Basically this is a combination of marketing 101 (find out what your consumers want and give it to them) and your overall objectives for the website.

Once you have clearly defined your goals, you should then look at features to be added or changes that can be made that provide positive answers to one or more of the following questions:

• Will this provide a better experience for the websites consumers?
• Will this make it easier for administrators and content providers to maintain my web properties?
• Will this change lead me to my ultimate objective for the site?

Everyone needs to define their own criteria for the questions they need answered before implementing a feature to a website. I find the above three questions help to rank any features I may want to add, or for that matter remove from a web property.

Once you are sure you have the right feature sets then you need to look at some of the other issues such as:

Content and it’s Organisation

This is simple information architecture and you should be thinking about answering questions like:

·         How should I divide my content?

·         What is the best way to separate content from presentation and to what degree should I do this?

·         How do I organise content to make it easier for site visitors to perform actions with that content? i.e. add an item to a shopping cart….

·         Do I want to make the same content available through multiple form factors? i.e. browser and a smart phone

There are many questions like these that could impact greatly on how your website is viewed by the sites visitors.

Finding your way around

Unless your website consists of a single page then site navigation needs to feature in your thinking. Some of the things you need to think about are:

·         How clearly labelled are items in your site?

·         How well can I find a path to my desired location on the site?

·         How easy is it to get back to a safe point on the site if you get lost?

·         Are my links and labels in places people expect to see them?

You could go on and on listing questions to ask regarding navigating your way around websites but from personal experience this is not always as straight forward as one might hope.

Organizing the view

Ask any Newspaper or Magazine editor about page layout and capturing the reader’s attention and you are likely to start a fairly long and animated discussion about how crucial this is to their success. Yet many websites simply fail to understand how the organisation of a page and directing readers to the key areas of a site can be the make or break factor in a websites success. That flashy Ajax gadget won’t do you much good if no one notices it due to its bad position on your site!

Performing actions

Just about any website or application allows you to perform action whether it is clicking on a menu button or purchasing items from an online store. All types of interactions need to be thought out from what happens when a visitor to the site clicks on a submit button through to where that submit button should be located.

Many people are now familiar with software and have certain expectations about where things like menu bars and buttons should be located. Often in the search for to be new and exciting website developers attempt to change these items leading to confusion on the part of the site visitor. Experimenting with new ideas can be good but remember some times experiments can go tragically wrong…

Complex Data

The display of complex data i.e. through tables, graphs, and maps can be some of the best interfaces on any website. However poor design and using the incorrect tools can turn a sites best feature into its worst. When someone looks at this type of data they are trying to learn something or to gain a better understanding of the subject matter. This is one of those areas that I feel more so than any other is where the needs of the site visitor far out way the needs of the site creator. i.e. find out how your visitors want to view the data and interact with it and give them what they want.

Adding the wow factor (making it look good)

This is the one everyone is looking for the wow aspect. This is the one area where you can really see some of the Web 2.0 techniques coming into there own. My message here is actually fairly simple – if you can’t create a wow factor without Web 2.0 you are unlikely to be able to create one with it.

As you can see, none of the above items specifically require Web 2.0, but many of these items could be implemented using Web 2.0 methods, provided those methods add value to your overall website strategy and objectives, and could not be implemented more effectively using other methods.