by Gary Welz
New Paradigms of Publishing: Part II
Dynamic Content
I think the future of Web publishing will be in what is called Dynamic Content--content that is generated "on the fly" uniquely for each visitor to the site. Bruce Falck of Phoenix Pop Productions says:
Content should be presented in a user-specific manner--place the user in her/his *context*. . . . The idea of a "stateful session," which implies that you are recognized by the site (not in the big brother context), is going to be the future of the Web. A site should know who you are, what you like and, based on that, present you with the relevant content. The Web has not yet delivered the kind of seamless infomation we had all hoped for--the "intelligence" of clients and servers is really where it is at.Peter Adams, Director of Interactive & Creative Services for poppe.com, a division of Poppe Tyson Advertising, asserts that dynamic pages are really just means to an end, and that end is offering applications and services to users of Web sites that provide "service" and "utility." It doesn't matter to him whether that application might be delivered by Java, CGI, Shockwave, or come in the form of popular services like MSN, IBM infoSage, Fedex package tracker, or whatever; it is important to see that the success of those dynamic pages comes through the delivery of utility.
"To an online marketer," he says, "utility translates into branding. For example, I am more likely to ship packages via Fedex because I know that I can communicate with Fedex on my terms (via Web). Same with online banking, etc."
He believes that dynamic pages should make up the majority of a Web site--especially in the navigation arena. A navigation engine, for him, should ask each visitor the questions: "What is your focus?" or "What area are you interested in?" Then a personalized navigational path should be drawn through the content for that visitor. In his mind, this is a much more intelligent way to build a site than the static hierarchical tree model that we all have been working with for the past two years. "It saves a user time, puts content pieces in perspective, and generally orders the content landscape around the view of the user (not the company's org. chart). And it saves frustration too, which equals utility, which equals branding to some extent."
Adams describes two big dynamic projects that Poppe Tyson has worked on. One, Valvoline Racing Game, is a dynamic racing game made with Macromedia Shockwave that incorporates random access to a database of trivia questions. Users answer questions as fast as they can to complete a qualifying lap. The response has been high, with 40-60 people qualifying every day. The dynamic "leader board" let's users compete against each other. According to Adams the game now gets thousands of hits a day, making it the most popular piece on the site.
The other project Adams mentions is the T Rowe Price Mutual Fund Watch List. It lets users create a personalized watch list of their own portfolio of funds and get price updates each day. It now has over 10,000 registered users and is growing rapidly. It is by far the most popular component of the huge T Rowe Price site. Adams says, "the point here is that these dynamic segments (applications) outshine the static parts of the site in terms of traffic and user response."
One of the most successful and popular dynamic sites is Firefly, which offers visitors personalized recommendations about music, movies, and other things based on personal information they submit and the likes and dislikes of other users with similar profiles. There is obvious value to advertisers on this site because they can know a great deal more about their visitors than they would from most other sites.
From the Web developer's point of the view, the question is how to convince a client that the large upfront investment required to created a dynamic site is worthwhile. Ernest Kim, New Media Designer at Lifetime Television, acknowledges that the initial cost of building a dynamic site will be high, but that it pays off in the long term. He even goes so far as to suggest that Web development companies absorb some of the expense of building the robust database that goes at the back end. If built with the expectation that the engine will be reused on future projects, the cost can be amortized over time. Kim thinks this is analogous to 3D game developers who invest heavily in building the rendering engines for their games, but then utilize that same engine in future products. By spreading the cost out over multiple projects, a developer can solve the "sticker shock" problem on the client side of the equation.
This is just the first manifestation of the "intelligent Internet"--an information universe that finds the things you want and brings them to you--even the things you didn't know you wanted. Information is there to serve you, not just to inform you in the familiar sense. We're not going to use the Internet to become better informed, we're going to use it to conduct our lives more efficiently and to obtain the kind of services that previously only a great deal of time and travel could afford us.
