Web 2.0 Applications

Compelling Benefits for Government & Business

Web 2.0 applications can help you save money, increase production, better service your customers and dramatically improve the experience of visitors to your website. How can a web 2.0 application do this? Read on, and we’ll explain.

First of all, I’m not talking about Web 2.0 as it pertains to social networking sites and services like Facebook, Twitter and Delicious. I’m talking about the many new web development technologies that – combined with widely available broadband connections – have dramatically changed the speed, responsiveness and richness of web applications.

Examples of these Web 2.0 technologies are Adobe Flex, Microsoft Silverlight, AJAX and Ruby-On-Rails. It’s not important that you understand what each of these does except to know they have made what used to be impossible on the web - possible. These technologies are enabling developers to transform the web into a greatly improved medium for production applications, online marketing and customer service.

More and more users expect websites to use these technologies to deliver rich and compelling experiences that include user generated content, multi-media, detailed information that instantly appears when they cursor over a spot and a host of other features that mean more information and less waiting.

Benefits of Web 2.0 Applications

Web 2.0 applications provide two key benefits:

Increased Speed and Efficiency

This is especially important for production applications in both government agencies and businesses. Time is money, and the increased speed of these applications enable more work to be done per hour.

Dramatically Improved User Experience

People get more information faster, and are thus happier with the experience. People are busy. The one thing – even more important than fancy graphics – that people want from a website is quick access to the information they are seeking. They don’t want to hunt for information, and they absolutely love it when a website surprises them and provides more information than expected.

A great example of a Web 2.0 application is Google Maps. They not only give you directions, but you can overlay a wide variety of useful information including the actual satellite view of the map, webcams and related videos and photographs.

Google Maps will even give you a street-level view at different points along your route as shown in the screen shot above.

Some Key Features of Web 2.0 Applications

The following are some of the key features that set Web 2.0 applications apart from the web applications of the past.

New data can be presented without the need for a page refresh.

This means information can simply appear on a page based on user input such as a click, cursor movement or a TAB after entering information in a field.

Information in an online form is not lost due to typo’s or illegal characters when the SUBMIT button is pressed.

This is a huge time saver, and a feature that dramatically improves the user experience!

Think about all the times you have filled out an online form and pressed the SUBMIT button only to be told the phone number field could not accept dashes. Then, when you hit the BACK button to remove the dashes, you discovered that ALL of your information was gone. This can be a very aggravating experience for a user who has spent several minutes to fill out a form.

The difference is that when you press the SUBMIT button on a Web 2.0 form, all the error checking is done immediately. The page does not refresh, so your information remains in the form where it can be easily revised.

Richness of Information

If you can imagine it, you can have it on your website. This includes custom fancy video and audio players, detailed information that appears when a user cursors over an image or word, or dynamically changing full-color gauges, bar charts or statistics. There is virtually no limitation what you can put on a website!

Consider a Web 2.0 Application for Your Website

If you want to explore developing a Web 2.0 application for your organization’s website, we're ready to talk to you. Send an email to info@webworldtech.com or give us a call at (866)-570-0500. A friendly and knowledgeable person is waiting to take your call.

Webworld developers were on the cutting edge of this technology and, in fact, developed one of the world’s first Web 2.0 prototype applications using Macromedia – now Adobe – Flex in 2005. In fact, Macromedia was so impressed with the application that they invited us to MAX 2005 to give a formal presentation about our accomplishment.

Since those early days of Web 2.0 technologies, we have successfully completed a number of Web 2.0 development projects. Webworld developed the U.S. Department of State’s Mission Activity Tracker, a Web 2.0 application that has been praised by State Department officials during Congressional hearings. Our technical experts were also on the team that created Hewlett Packard’s compelling “What Do You Have to Say?” website.