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Strengthen Your Website Content with Online Database Access
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By Leokadia Angela
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Website content, as articles, has taken center stage as webpublishers scramble to differentiate their online offers. Asboth the quantity and quality of articles have accelerated, sotoo have online directories. These directories often resemblemere lists, but they can be powerful content additions thatserve to deepen the value of the overall selling proposition byhelping users in locating critical, related resources that forthe visitor is otherwise much too time consuming.
On today's websites, it is not uncommon to find online databasesdesigned to provide the data-hungry website visitor with morecomprehensive database management functions which are farsuperior to list-style directories. At a minimum, we findweb-driven data pages that include search and display functionswhich facilitate quick and easy manipulation of back-end SQLdatabases. Many sites also include options to add, edit, delete,print, and even download data directly from the database to thedesktop, all enabled with multiple levels of login/passwordsecurity. While this is not revolutionary, the technicalexpertise required to build database-driven web pages has beenthe domain of more sophisticated online publishers who not onlyowned the back end database outright, but possessed the requiredexpertise to build and maintain such access for their loyalconstituents.
But that has all changed. A flurry of new, low-cost desktoptools have entered the scene, leveling the playing field for thebudget-strapped internet marketer who, until recently, waslimited to throwing in a basic "telephone book" style directoryin an attempt to bolster his value proposition.
Three such tool categories warrant a closer look:
Web data extraction tools costing less than $400 enable webcontent, as "repeating data", to be easily extracted to MSExcel, MS Access, or virtually any SQL database in high volume.This data serves to build, or at least augment the publisher's'snew online database. (Ideally, one should first obtainpermission from the website owner before scraping large volumesof data).
The next challenge is to manipulate the collected data nowresident in multiple files, and often in disparate data formats.Though list processing applications have long been available,lower cost tools now offer powerful merge/purge capabilitieswithout the need to import and export files in the process. Somesimple routines and the data is ready to upload to the databaseon the host web server.
Finally, the publisher builds the web pages which access thedatabase. Perhaps most exciting is the arrival of a wide varietyof desktop code generators, many which are open source, thatallow a non-programmer to build customized web pages that rivalthe database search, display, add, edit,delete and downloadcapabilities previously reserved for the more technicalpublisher. No longer is the web publisher required to know asingle SQL command to accomplish this feat. Amazingly, most ofthese tools generate pure PHP or PERL code. All that remains isto upload the generated code to the host database and theproject is complete. The website now houses a "living,breathing" database, to the extent that the publisher desires tomaintain fresh data.
One of the more common, and simple applications ofdatabase-driven web pages is to build versatile Frequently AskedQuestions (FAQ) pages. Questions and answers can be queried bycategory (e.g. pricing, product) or keyword (e.g. sportinggoods), while enriching the users support experience.
How can such newfound capabilities be monetized? Thepossibilities are plenty. Limited datasets can be made freelysearchable and viewable for casual visitors, though it's usuallywise to request that the user register even if membership isfree. The idea is to prime the pump, getting casual users tothirst for more comprehensive database access. Extended and fulldatabase access can be reserved only for paid members.
Never has a publisher had such power to build data-rich contentthat can serve to immediately strengthen his unique sellingsales proposition. In the old paradigm, he who owned the dataheld all the power. Today, data is everywhere for the internetentrepreneur. By applying the latest database tools, any websitepublisher can now cement the most loyal of customerrelationships by ensuring that his customer has a reason to keepcoming back.
Web visitors have a difficult enough time sorting out theperceived sameness of online offerings. For the content builder,there are few better methods to establish and lock in immediatecredibility with customers than to implement an easilyaccessible database that underscores the site's overall contenttheme.
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