At Agency Fusion we’re fortunate to have some really great clients. For us, a great client is one who appreciates our experience and recognizes our expertise. We’ve been doing web development for years and years now (some of us since 1994) so we’ve definitely been around the block a few times. We recognize, however, that some would-be clients haven’t yet done enough web projects to be in a position to fully understand how web development works.

This is an attempt to draw a helpful analogy for the benefit of those who’d like to better understand how websites are (or should be) built.

Additionally, this is for the benefit of those of us who build websites so that perhaps we can better explain to our clients what it is that we do and why it pays to follow a thorough process!

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If you’ve spent any time researching content management systems lately, you’re aware that the market is absolutely full of competing products. It seems like a new CMS product is announced somewhere on the Web just about every week.

I think one of the main reasons for this flood of new products is that the barrier to entry is so low. To create a CMS, one only needs to create a way for a user to enter some information via a web form, save that information somewhere, and then display it as the content of a web page. Developers, in fact, will often create such a tool for their own use and then decide later to sell that tool to clients.

Additionally, the continual stream of new CMS products is driven by the fact that almost all websites are more easily managed via a CMS. Developers understand the benefits and the clients are starting to see the benefits so developers keep creating more systems.

So what’s the result, then, of having a marketplace filled with so many content management systems?

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Yahoo just launched a new advertising tool called SmartAds. The tool takes personalization to a new level by allowing marketers to deliver ads that are more relevant to the viewer.

An example from the CNET article helps illustrate:

For instance, instead of just seeing a generic ad for a Toyota Prius, a woman in San Francisco who conducts research on hybrid cars on Yahoo Autos could be served an ad for a local San Francisco dealer, along with information on the types of Priuses in stock and their purchase price. The ad, which is configured on the fly, could also feature a background color targeted for women in her age range, as well as a Golden Gate Bridge logo.

Initially the ads will appear on Yahoo’s publisher network but will eventually show on partner sites like Comcast and eBay.

For more information check out the full article.