Seomoz, the major authority on SEO, social media, and tips on running an SEO agency, has recently rounded up their Web 2.0 awards. “Web 2.0” refers to a current regeneration of sites that concentrate on user generated content and open-source applications online.

The sites were ranked based on usability, usefulness, social aspects, interface & design, and content quality. A total of 300 websites were monitored which were divided into 30 categories. Today we’re casting a quick look at some of the websites that were nominated in the Web Development and Design category.

1^st Place Winner

CSS Beauty CSS Beauty is a database of well designed CSS sites and a forum of related resources. CSSBEAUTY is a project focused on providing its audience with a database of well designed CSS based websites from around the world. Its purpose is to showcase designer’s work and to act as a small portal to the CSS design community. Besides, CSS Beauty itself is pretty and easy to navigate.

2^nd Place Winner

Performancing is a fast-paced company that originated as a blog community and is currently supplying both a highly useful browser plug-in for Firefox and a robust analytics system for bloggers. Performancing seeks to create a home for professional bloggers. – a place where those that want to make money from their blogs can learn, and perfect the art of making a living from weblogging.

3^rd Place Winner

Mint, Shaun Inman’s popular blog analytics software isn’t free, but it’s affordable (at $30). Mint is an extensible web site analytics program. Its interface is an exercise in simplicity. Visits, referrers, popular pages and searches can all be taken in at a glance on Mint’s flexible dashboard.

Some other honorable Web 2.0 nominations:

Prototype Javascript Framework aims to ease development of dynamic web applications. Featuring a unique, easy-to-use toolkit for class-driven development and the nicest Ajax library around, Prototype is quickly becoming the codebase of choice for web application developers everywhere.

Surf Tail makes it easier to find what you want on the web by following those who have gone before you. The tails of surfers are updated in real time so you can see exactly what blogs or sites are currently related to the one you’re reading and as more people follow the link it reinforces and maintains it.

Ajaxwhois.com is developed and maintained by internet entrepreneur Carl Mercier as a pet project. It was originally intended to be a proof of concept and a fun side project. However, the user’s response has been so overwhelming that it has since been turned into a full-blown website. AW is a comprehensive and easy to use service for finding available domain names and obtaining WHOIS and other information about registered domain names.

ColorBlender is a free online tool for color matching and palette design. ColorBlender is developed by Kim Jensen and can best be described as a “version 2.0″ of ColorMatch 5K tool developed for the Danish 5 KB web design competition in 2001. The tool is completely free to use, however, users are encouraged help the site owner finance website hosting and continuous development of this tool and others.

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Cisco Systems Inc. recently acquired WebEx for $3.2 billion in cash. WebEx is a leader in online meeting applications, with a 64% market share. More than 3.5 million people use WebEx every month to communicate and collaborate online. WebEx, founded in 1995, had reported earnings of $48.6 million and revenue of $380 million in 2006.

Cisco is the networking leader and has acquired quite a few interesting companies lately. Recently Cisco bought IronPort, a network security provider. Then, for an undisclosed amount, Cisco got a hold of Five Across, a social networking company. Currently Cisco is building its own video conferencing software aimed at corporate customers.

This deal shows that web-conferencing has huge potential to grow in the U.S and beyond. Some other major web-conferencing providers: LiveMeeting, GotoMeeting, Yuuguu, WebDialogs, AdobeConnect, DimDim, Yugma, Vyew, and Qwaq.

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Economists have estimated that it costs 6 times less to keep business relationships with existing customers than to find new ones. Therefore, successful businesses do their best to ensure maximum profits from customers they already have. To do this companies need to identify customers that bring in the most money and make sure those paying clients won’t switch to a competitor.

Intimacy vs. standardization

A small store in a small town generally has no problem connecting with and keeping it’s clients. A store manager calls customers by name and knows most of them personally. As businesses have grown, the intimacy has quickly faded away. Marketing for masses and standardized production is simply not conducive to building intimate customer relationships. Companies no longer know who their customers are. In turn, customers lose their trust. Is there a way for companies with tens of thousands of customers to find a way to avoid alienating their customers and understand them on a more personal level?

CRM Response: From Concept to IT

A CRM is a complex system that allows businesses to evaluate the economical value of each customer and to create effective strategies that encourage customer loyalty.

Customer relations management wouldn’t be possible without CRM software. CRM software collects, processes, and organizes customer information. It manages millions of interactions between the company and its customers. Some of the key players in the CRM software market are Salesforce, GoldMine, Heat, Epicor Clientele.

CRM Technology Alone Is Not a Solution

No matter how advanced the CRM software your company is using, IT platforms won’t solve customer relationship management problems. The key functionality in all CRM systems is the automation of business processes and tasks. Therefore, customer relations management should be regarded as a company’s business philosophy rather than a single project.

All company employees should be introduced to the CRM because without their involvement and use, the CRM system is a waste of time and money. Before you decide to implement CRM software for your website, you need to carefully scrutinize your ecommerce business and identify business processes and practices that can be automated or must to be automated.

Not only will a well-crafted CRM strategy will reinforce your online business and yield good economical gains, but it will also help to foster customer confidence and loyalty. CEOs however, should realize that the effective implementation of a CRM will require a certain amount of investment and attention.

Our company can help you integrate CRM software to your website. Contact us for more information about CRM software integration and management.

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Each e-commerce website might have a slightly different approach to their online sales process. Methods of how websites handle orders, leads, accounts, and communicate with other websites may vary.

In spite of that, whatever functions or actions your visitors take while shopping can be recorded as data points and can be transferred over to a database driven CRM system automatically if two systems are properly integrated. Salesforce.com is one of the best examples of CRM software that can be integrated with your ecommerce site.

At the end of your day you can look at your Salesforce account and know how well your business performed in relation to your goals. You’ll know how many products you sold, who you should contact with an offer and when, what time of day was best for business, customer demographics, etc. You’ll also have plenty of customer contact information to build a valuable profile for each potential customer.

Automated functionality within Salesforce will choose customers whom you should give most attention and care based on predefined criteria. Salesforce also will filter out bad customers, bad leads, and inactive accounts automatically.

Top 10 reasons to connect CRM software to your e-commerce website:

1. Application exchage (import your settings/data from other database driven software, use in tandem with other applications e.g. QuickBooks, google adwords, MapQuest etc, )
2. Estimate which PPC keywords bring in more money
3. Online/offline access
4. Make decisions on the fly (make decisions based on your business data)
5. Works the way your online business works (fully customizable to suit your online business model)
6. Provides the right information to the right people (data security, access levels)
7. Simplifies sales pipeline, less steps, more qualified leads
8. Enhances email marketing campaigns with personalized information
9. Identifies paying customers
10. Offers long term economical gain

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In a conversation with a financial analyst, CEO of Microsoft Steve Ballmer argued that MS Vista’s sales have been down due to all those pirates doing their dirty job in China, Russia, India, Brazil, and other emerging markets.

He also admitted that Microsoft will keep putting more emphasis on the development of more Windows Genuine features to compensate for low sales on a global level and to prevent illegal software distribution.

Of course they have to do something about it! Shelling out accusations may help defend their cause for a while, but in the long-haul? This is all too strange!

The MS Vista operating system is known for being extremely high tech, pushing hardware requirements to the limit. Why should guys from those countries try burning copies of MS Vista if most PC’s can even run the software? Maybe just for the thrill of it?

Think for yourself.

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