Maintaining and Evolving Successful Commercial Websites

Managing change, content, customer relationships, and site measurement

by Ashley Friedlein

Published by Kogan, 2000
Paperback, 166 pages
ISBN: 1-55860-830-3

Ashley Friedlein's first book, Web Project Management: Delivering Successful Commercial Web Sites, became a bestseller and an essential reference for web professionals developing new sites. Now this book addresses the realities of successful sites today, namely the notion that maintaining and evolving a site is actually a bigger commitment than launching it.

Management wants to maximise returns and obtain reliable performance data, customers demand better service and insist on sites that are more advanced yet easier to use, and the website must increasingly be integrated with the entire business even as the amount of information it handles continues to grow.

Maintaining and Evolving Successful Commercial Web Sites focuses more on process, reality, and pragmatism and less on strategic theory. It provides the reader with the knowledge, tools, approaches, and processes to manage key site maintenance and evolution projects, providing answers to the following questions:

• How can I better manage changes and updates to the Web site?
• How can I scale up to allow more contributions and more content to the site, and still maintain quality and control?
• What is content management and how do I go about it?
• How do I go about personalization or community building?
• What is Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and how do I actually do it online?
• How do I measure and report on how well the site is doing?
• How do I avoid information overload?
• How do I maximize the value the site creates?

The book also includes case studies to demonstrate candidly how the issues discussed in the book translate into reality.