David Hillis News & Articles

As another year closes and a new year rises, it is time to make my annual predictions for the web content management industry in 2013. This year, rather than focusing on specific predictions, it is more useful to look at the trends that will impact the industry. 2013 will be a year where the trend-line dictates the future.

Everyone knows the mobile web is growing at light speed, introducing new opportunities and challenges in web management. However, when I look at my client’s web analytics, the leading device accessing their website is not a smartphone, it’s a tablet. Apple iPad consistently ranks as the #1 device for viewing web content.

Adobe recently released some research that backs this up. Adobe’s “The Rise of Tablets" (pdf) projects that tablet visits will surpass all smartphone visits by January 2013 and generate over 10 percent of all website visits by early 2014. Tablet web traffic is growing 200 percent faster than smartphones. The iPad commands the tablet market. Last year Comscore reported that the Apple iPad accounted for over 97 percent of tablet web traffic.

So you have built your mobile website or app and now you want to monetize it. You have a few options: you can sell apps on iTunes or other stores, charge a subscription or paywall, or make your content free and subsidize it with advertising.

The best approach will be determined by your audience, the value of your content or service and your distribution model.

It’s that time again. With 2011 coming to a close and 2012 swiftly approaching, it’s time once again to make my predictions for what the coming year holds for the content management industry.

When Steve Jobs proclaimed that the post-PC era had arrived, most people assumed it was the mobile phone that was the cause of this transition. Yet, alongside the mobile phone, the heir apparent in the post-PC world is the cloud. Mobile is expanding the cloud, and the relationship between mobile devices and cloud computing is changing everything, from how consumers manage their information to how developers build and manage applications on the Internet.

There are a few key mobile trends that are contributing to rapid growth in cloud computing.

There is a saying in the software industry that goes, “Choose two: fast, cheap, or good.” The same can be said of content, commerce and community -- otherwise known as the three C’s of web experience. It’s difficult to make two of these elements work together; three is a herculean task. But it doesn’t have to be.

A perfect storm. Mobile and social have converged.

When asked about the quality of his tanks, Joseph Stalin famously quipped, “Quantity has a quality all of its own.” Today most people running social networks and communities have the same outlook. The value of the network is measured solely on the number of members -- and bigger is always better. These networks pay very little attention to user profiles or to the quality of the communications.

Mobile strategy often starts with ambitious plans for native apps or new mobile web sites. This makes sense, but falls short of supporting the most important element of a mobile strategy -- Deep Linking.

Typography is the single most import element of web design. Type has impact. It can make your content sing, or die. It delivers your message, embodies your brand and is the conduit for web experience.

Imagine if the Internet were 10 times as large. Now imagine if the explosive growth of the Internet happened 10 times as fast. That is exactly what is happening now.

Today we are at the beginning of a mammoth tech cycle that will eclipse the PC-based Internet and completely change content management. It’s the Mobile Internet Era. If you have not done so already, it’s time to put your mobile strategy in motion.

Conventional wisdom says web content should be concise. However, blind application of this rule is a mistake -- there are good cases for lengthy, dense web content.