Websites and web applications
As we enter the second generations of websites, companies are starting to need websites that do things, rather than just websites that show pictures and text.
dobney.com has designed and implemented a number of web applications from Notanant our marketing knowledge system to FieldShare, the on-line database of market research fieldworkers.
In the first generation of websites, the website itself was seen as an extension of the printed page, very graphical in nature with relatively fixed and static text in pure HTML. Graphic designers got to work making the sites look Flash and pretty, sometimes overloading the viewer with images and colours. Small businesses followed suit with often cheap and cheerful imitations just two or three pages long. The problem was that as soon as anything changed on the site it required a specialist with expertise in HTML to make any changes. Meanwhile larger corporate sites put together complex database driven sites where it became impossible to find anything.
The result was that Internet users who wanted click-and-go information and to find information quickly turned off when that information was hidden behind pretty but vacant graphics, or was totally out-of-date, or was hidden in the depths of a corporate database.
Thankfully we are now getting real websites for real people, and not just better quality browsing, but sites that are easier to keep up-to-date and actually have some functional ability. The primary examples include the original e-commerce sites, but there are sites with maps, with blogs and discussions, that can do your printing or arrange your holiday. We refer to this newer raft of functional sites as second-generation websites, often created as specific web-applications (that is they only exist on the web, not as stand-alone programs).
We see ourselves as being at the forefront of this drive. Our flagship web-application Notanant is purely web-based and makes it simple to create and change information on-line, whether just as a simple website, a directory or a fully-blown private marketing intelligence centre.
Because of our deep experience in creating and tracking web-application development we are able to offer businesses of any size high quality development skills in all areas of web-application design.
For help and advice on building web-applications please contact info@dobney.com