How to get a Social Web Ready Website Design for Small Businesses

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In the 90s, web was all about HTML and plain old static web pages. Then came blogs and content syndication standards such as RSS, Atom and XML. This totally changed the appearance of the World Wide Web. Content became more easily and more readily available across the web. People started sharing their opinions on the web, content generation became a common practice, and the growth of the web sky rocketed.

Then came Web 2.0, with applications designed totally for the web such as twitter, facebook, gmail, digg and so many others. This new web is what many experts call “Social Web”. It’s the era of the web and when the web itself is totally driven by the interactions among the web users. For example content is generated on twitter when you tweet, retweet or share a hyperlink. Content is generated again when someone retweets your tweet or shares it with friends.

A business website today needs to accommodate social web into it is website design. Because this is where the web is heading and if you don’t follow this trend you will be left behind because all your targeted audiences are using the social web and you would be sticking to the cave age period.

 A social ready website design means that your website should allow the visitors to use their social web profiles on your website to record their interactions with the content on your web pages. For example you might have noticed that many popular blogs now offer their visitors a chance to comment on their posts by connecting from their facebook account. This is mutually benefit for both the website owner and the visitor. As the visitor comments on their website using their facebook account their comment with the link to this webpage gets posted on their profile. This means it will become visible to their friends and they can come to the website to contribute their own thoughts on the matter.

Website design for the social web not only allows the visitors to sign in with their facebook accounts, it gives them a variety of opportunities to use their social profiles in many different ways on their website. For example for social bookmarkers there is a handy widget added to website design so that social bookmarks can easily be posted on sites like Digg, Stumbleupon, Delicious, Mixx, reddit, etc.

Allowing visitors to use their social web profiles on your business website does not make your website social ready, until the website itself starts using different social web profiles on the website. For example a business account on twitter, or a facebook fanpage, or both can be added to sidebar allowing your website’s visitors to follow you on their social network, become your fan or friend, and interact it with you and the content you publish on your business website.

You can also use your social web profiles to bring traffic to your business website, and from your business website to your social web profiles. Using social web not only makes your website more user friendly in this age and time but it also strengthens your brand image as a modern web savvy business.