If you are using video on your site, it is possible to write code to show the video in HTML5 video format if it detects certain browsers / operating systems. Take some extra time and put a check in place to show HTML5 video if flash isn’t available. This process may be too complicated and time consuming for most people so a good alternative is using YouTube for the video’s which is supported on the iPAD/iPhone. If you embed a YouTube video, The Apple Ipad and Iphone know’s that it is a video and will play it in the native player on the iPad/iPhone. One last thing is make sure you create a iPhone/iPad icon for your website when creating your favicons. Here is a link to a iPhone/iPad icon generator and a little more information on creating icons.  Also keep in mind the resolution on the iPad is 1024×768, so when building your designs, you want to target that resolution.

With a potential users base of millions of IPAD users, make sure your website works well for that audience too.

In this post I’m going to write about the evolution of the industry and the services provided to customers.  This will help make sense of future posts that go into the logic and value of why companies today need to focus on the  integration of internet marketing and web development to generate results.

The 1980’s was a time of trial and error on the information super highway.  There was no Internet.  Proprietary online services were being developed by private companies like Compuserve, regional and national phone companies like Pacific Bell and MCI,  and  partnerships like CBS, IBM and Sears that formed Prodigy.  These subscriber-based networks offered things like information services, online gaming, user forums, software, file transfers, and shopping, and grew relatively quickly.  Compuserve and Prodigy were the leaders with over a million subscribers between them.  There were many other networks including a startup company called Control Video, a fledgling online game network with a soon to be well known marketing consultant at the helm, Steve Case.

Steve Case took Control Video and formed America Online (AOL), the new kid on the block of proprietary online networks.  AOL took a different approach than its competitors by focusing on people that were general computer users and not techies.  AOL offered the first graphical user interface (GUI), a variety of popular online games, information and shopping services, and the first flat-rate monthly pricing model in the industry.  And they took off like wildfire, blowing industry-leaders Compuserve and Prodigy out of the water. By 1993, AOL boasted 3 million subscribers and growing. AOL had the “cool factor” and enjoying every minute of it.  I remember one of my favorite AOL ad campaigns in the early 1990’s with their introduction of their new Windows GUI interface. The campaign stated, “The more Windows you open, the cooler it gets”.  I think that pretty much summed up where things were at for AOL.

At the same time, Interactive Television came on the scene with trials being done all over the U.S. by private companies like TV Answer/EON and cable networks like Time Warner. Huge amounts of money was being spent on different technologies for what looked to be the next big phase in our industry.  I joined the TV Answer initiative which was a satellite based network with TV set top boxes manufactured by HP. Our company spent $250 million bringing the service to market (financed primarily out of Mexico).  But much to our surprise, a little thing called the Internet was about come on the scene in a big way.

I worked for MCI in the mid-eighties as a corporate email evangelist (that wasn’t my title but that’s what I did) and reported a couple of levels under a guy named Vint Cerf. Vint was one of those braniacs who was both a visionary and marketer.  Turns out one of his main projects  was the development of protocols to connect disparate networks primarily for government use at the time.  His work earned him  the title of  the Father of the Internet (no, it wasn’t Al Gore as some claim).  So in the early 90’s, those of involved in the industry moved on from of Interactive TV and into the development of internet services.

At the time, I was part of a group of industry veterans building the first association for the online industry called The Interactive Services Association.  My little company, IDEV,  was also developing online services for America Online.  Mainly we were building online stores and information services on AOL for a variety of companies.  But once the net was in place, we couldn’t build websites fast enough.  Demand exceeded supply and our little company grew from 3 to 50 people in just a few years.  The focus was on development. It was like building Rome. Budgets were large and exhausted just getting the sites built.  IDEV was a little different than many companies at the time because we offered online strategy as an integrated part of the development process. But the strategy pretty much ended at the end of development and marketing was only addressed at basic levels. No matter how much we said the sites needed to be marketed, many people believed the internet was a  ”build it and they will come” model.   People soon found out that it just wasn’t so.  It wasn’t until the advent of search engines and directories (Google was a search engine and Yahoo was a Directory) that more interesting products and services became available to promote sites. We experimented with search engine marketing and other avenues to promote sites as the search engines became more robust and offered products that could produce a return on investment.

By that time millions of website were built, and the fact was that most of the sites weren’t generating much value for their owners.  Companies starting looking for ways to monetize their websites to get a return on their investment. That’s when it started to get clear that we needed to move to the next stage of providing integrated services that starts with strategy and integrates online marketing, web development, analytics,  and the ongoing  testing  and measurement required to determine quality of traffic and return on investment.

And so in 2002, I developed a more holistic view of building and marketing websites which I referred to as “integrated online marketing and development”. It flipped the traditional model of web development which was focus on development first and marketing second.  We became a web company that leads with marketing and utilizes our knowledge of design, user interface, and development to reach the marketing goals for the site.  It takes a little education to help people understand the real value of doing things in this way, but once they get the concept it becomes a no brainer.  This is where our company is today and many others are joining the ranks.  Rather than just building a pretty site and driving traffic to it, we look at all aspects of the cycle to determine quality traffic and the results it brings.  The next series of posts will address the specifics of integrated online marketing and development.

Stay tuned….