- Information at the Speed of Light
- Defining Your Market
- Adding Muscle to Your Site
- Summary
Defining Your Market
But let's look at the small to mid-size business model. Many businesses that operate within these parameters do not have a need to have information changed daily. But when they do need information changed, not having it updated in a timely fashion could hurt their business. Being that these changes may be few and far between, can these businesses justify the cost related to staffing a Web developer (full-time or part-time)? What is the true cost to hire freelancers? Are they available when you need and want them? Do the amount of changes justify the need to call and pay the sometimes exurbanite rates charges by Web development companies? Maybe yes, maybe no.
In most cases, if the average user (a non-technical programmer) had the power to go in and modify his own Web site, would it help his business grow? What would that business be willing to pay up front if it could have a system developed that was so easy that just about anyone in the office could use it to update the site 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and from any computer connected to the Internet from around the world?
I believe it is worth the extra cost up front to develop this application and gain full control (to a certain extent) versus having to pay probably higher fees in the long run and waiting on other people to attend to your needs...typically when they are available.
This application is commonly referred to as an Administration Application, or Admin for short. This Admin tool works best with Web sites that are database-driven; that is, the content is being parsed dynamically from a database stored on the Web server. Instead of the content being hard-coded into each page, the information is kept neat and orderly in fields and table structures of a database. As the viewer comes onto a particular page, the information is instantly retrieved from the database and placed into the appropriately designated areas of the page.