Rapid Web Design SEO Blog

As the owner of a web design and SEO company I am often put in the position to explain to my new clients many of the new technologies and what’s hot or not in the web industry. Many of my prospect client are asking me about what web 2.0 is and if their site is web 2.0.

O’Reilly’s explanation is detailed and a great read for a web developer but seems not to be a good source to give to client to read as they still seem not to understand after reading. With the comments “I still don’t get it” I am forced into a position to try and explain. Being good with explaining complicated web jargon into plain English this is a question which always gets me going on about a new form of look and design with Big button and round corners the use of AJAX and XML, having a business Blog and building communities.. blah blah

Even a read over wikipedia starts talking about server side technology, RSS, rich internet applications??? How can I possible send a client to wikipedia to define web 2.0. I can say that wikipedia is an example of web 2.0 as its based on a wiki type of site… a what site… you know wiki… oh no now I need to explain what a wiki site is!!!

See I think the reason why its so hard to explain is that there is no real definition to explain you your “average punter” after being in the web industry for many years growing with the change has made me understand what web 2.0 is but not down to the point where its easily explain in a one line sentence. It usually requires long explanations and visual examples.

Thinking more and more about this makes me wounder if web 2.0 is something that should in most cases be kept away from clients? Should we as developers know about web 2.0 but keep it hidden from the people we are building the pages for? I now learned not to mention web 2.0 in my meetings with clients as i always see them write it down and try to research it later after they leave but they seem to always come back wanting a better understanding of what web 2.0 means!

Dion Hinchcliffe’s Web 2.0 Blog talks once again very detailed about web 2.0 and has some great images but there is no way a client would read all that information even I skipped a para or 2… Hmmm… Seems that every thing I am reading is great and detailed for the experts but not our clients!

If any one has a great one liner to define web 2.0 I would love to know it, please post a comment or email me!