The Need To Keep Your Website Evolving

By Rusty Campbell

I started developing websites in 1996. I wrote some software that I was selling over the net at the time. I had a simple 5 page site that was not particularly optimized or well marketed. Over time, the business flourished in spite of itself. I hooked up with a marketer, and by 2000 we had sold over a million dollars worth of software.

The business changed. SEO, search engine optimization, became the standard. The search engines became more and more competitive. Social networking and blogging grew to astounding popularity. As connections to the internet got faster, videos and other large bandwidth users became viable.

The web today is nothing like the web of the 90's. It is faster, more interactive, and easier to access. Most people research all kinds of things on the web. It's become such a major resource that I for one, can't even imagine doing without it. My wife even spends time on the search engines researching things she has questions about, and believe me, she is probably the most anti-technology being on the planet.

You need to keep up with the changes in website development. Yet you may want to stay back a bit from the cutting edge. I've always called it the bleeding edge because of the effort involved understanding and using new and buggy technologies, that don't have good documentation as yet.

Staying back a year or so, gives the newest technologies a chance to mature. That way you won't waste your time dealing with technologies that aren't ready for prime time. That said, you do need to be aware of what's coming. When the tools are built to use the new stuff easily, you'll be ready.

That said, it is disastrous to get too far behind. You need to gather up, and use new technologies, and ideas as they become reasonably easy to work with. You should keep an eye on your competition. Often, they will point the way to new directions you should be traveling.

There are many resources on the internet to help you stay current. You need to spend some time every day keeping an eye on advancements. A good way to keep up with what is going on in the internet is to subscribe to a few rss feeds from sites like Slashdot. There is a lot of noise, and you can't believe everything they say, but they do keep up with the newest technologies.
Another good feed is Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim. It's fairly general and self-serving, but he has a nugget from time to time that is valuable to the internet marketer, or website owner.
Check out the ezine articles as well, there is much about the current techniques to keep you abreast of the changing times.

Rusty Campbell has been involved in internet marketing and software development since 1996. He also makes marketing reviews at http://www.reviewopportunity.com You can access his blog along with other valuable information at http://www.cybermarketingpro.com

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