At least once a week I find myself in a discussion with some successful individual who is curious or confused about some intricacy of the World Wide Web and how it is relevant to his or her business.

The discussion usually starts with a forced question about a new term, buzz word, or technology that was heard or read about. With the incredible access to unfiltered information, profound quotes by seemingly very important people, and prepackaged off the shelf products that use hype terminology as their feature check list, it is becoming harder and harder for people “not in the business” to separate what is important and what is fluff.

Heck, it is even getting harder for people in the business to handle the rate at which new tools, services and technologies are rolled out and platform supported. I tip my hat to the extra clever people at techcrunch.com, mashable.com, slashdot.org and other blogs who make my life that much easier to stay on top of things.

All of these questions seem to lead back to the fundamental question of “what you are trying to accomplish?” The right strategy will follow the goals.  I relate a company’s need for web strategy to the need for a PR strategy where if your intent is not simply stated, the media will take it and turn it into what it wants or serves its needs.

What sells more papers is not always what you want.  Many companies have no need for an official PR strategy, or do not realize it until it is too late, the same could be said for a web strategy.  Where if even a simple strategy is not put in place it is only a matter of time before the tail of technology starts wagging the dog of business needs.

Today it matters less if you are a small business or a large company with an IT staff; you are still faced with a plethora of online options (see Figure 1) for any web project.

It can get absolutely confusing, just look at some of the current discussions hovering around the Internet.  It is almost comical. When does Web 2.0 become Web 3.0 and was there ever a Web 1?  What is a Rich Internet Application?  Is Flash going to be knocked out by HTML5?  I thought AJAX was a soap; not Asynchronous JavaScript and XML and by soap I meant surface cleaner not Simple Open Access Protocol.  Why do I have to update my CMS? What is social media?  Less than a year ago it was social networking?  How can you have experts in it when the users are still trying to figure out what they like about it?  How can I listen to Zuckerberg when his goal when he began was to create an enhanced yearbook, oh yeah 400 million users and his net worth of approximately $4 billion?  However what is a good reason for my business to use Facebook and how do I do it?  What makes the Facebook Open Graph open (if you have never heard of the Open Graph API you should contact us)?  Who needs Twitter?  Who cares what I am having for dinner… how can Twitter really help me?  What is Ruby on Rails – Jewelry?  I thought GoDaddy was just for the Super Bowl ads.  I am afraid to even mention Turkish hackers and their rationale.  What is happening with search engines, if you Google Bing you get bing.com as the top result?  If you Bing Google you get the top unpaid ad as the Google Wikipedia page.  How does this happen?  What is the future of paid search? Does Al Gore get credit for creating the Cloud as well?

This is just scratching the surface, where Moore’s law of exponential growth applies to your online options is only further complicated by the great hype drivers in the market.

Despite all its complexities the Internet is a pretty amazing tool and when utilized properly has shown how it has and will continue to transform the way we live our lives, and have no delusions, the Internet is here to stay.

Our reality is how to best use it to meet our respective needs.  I would strongly suggest to anyone about to undertake a new web project to do three things.

1. Simply define the goals of the initiative without mentioning specific technologies, knowing that you might have architectural designs that can be factored in later.
2. Unless you are creating an interface between two completed automated systems and there is no human interaction, you must keep the end user at the forefront of your mind.  We at Kishmish have a strong belief that the launch of any new web project is just that a launch, a start, the beginning of a life cycle.
3. Whoever you work with (internal or external), and whatever product you are using, have it be made clear how goals will be measured – both goals related to the entire strategy as well as individual elements. Many of our new clients do not realize at first the advancements in analytics and what excellent packages are available.  Part of our deliverables to them is always the knowledge of how well things are working, good and bad.

With that, I wish you happy web strategizing, keep it simple and remember, it is good to have options and if you are ever overwhelmed, there are people to talk to who can help.