Develop Self-Sufficiency

So, you hire a web consulting firm to develop your web site. They create a powerful site and you now have a great presence on the web.

But now you need to change the information on the web site -- detailing new products or services or updating existing information. You have to either contract the consulting firm to make these changes for you or develop the skills in-house.

Or you could use database integration technology to make changes to your web site. You would use simple on-line forms with your web browser to edit the information in the database. These changes are immediately posted to the web site and you are done.

You are now self-sufficient, eliminating the time, cost and complexity of contacting the consulting firm to make the changes.

Reduce the Costs of Web Development

• Database integration technology can greatly reduce the cost of developing a web site in the first place and even make otherwise impractical sites do-able.
  
  
• Development costs are reduced by first storing the desired information in a database or accessing existing databases. Then, a limited number of templates are created to display different categories of information. Finally, the web pages are generated automatically using the defined templates and data from the database.
  
  
• This approach is much more efficient than creating every individual web page and link 'by hand'.

Greatly Reduce Site Maintenance Costs

• One of the strengths of a great web site is that it's kept up-to-date by frequent changes and additions. The burden of ongoing site maintenance is greatly reduced using database integration technology.
  
  
• To add or change information on a Database WebWorks web page, you change the information in the database itself. The web pages are updated automatically.
  
  
• Changing information in your database takes much less time than manually creating new web pages or editing web pages by hand, and you can easily edit the database with your web browser using on-line forms.

This approach yields major cost savings and slashes information delivery time.

Provide New and/or Upgraded Services

Database integration technology can provide sophisticated services that go beyond the simple display of static information. An automated search agent can search your database periodically for information of interest to your customers, and it can e-mail the results.

For instance, customers at a real estate site could fill out a profile specifying the criteria of the house they are looking for. Each week, the automated search agent would search the listings and e-mail each customer information about houses matching their criteria.

Static web pages provide only a fixed way to look at information. Using database technology you can add much more flexible ways of viewing the information.

Here's another example:

Let's say that a public TV station puts their program guide on the Internet using traditional static web pages -- the program schedule is now available to viewers who can check each day's list to see what is playing.

If this service was in a database it would be much more flexible and much more attractive to the viewer.

In addition to being able to see a day's program listings, the viewer could look up when a particular show was playing. Viewers can search for the show even if you didn't remember the exact title using a partial match search or ask for more general information, like when the news programs are on.

The database could also generate an alphabetical list of all of the programs playing at the station including what type of programs they were. The viewer could even search the descriptions of the shows for a particular topic of interest.

There are more applications of online database integration on the Database WebWorks Examples page.

Increase Customer Loyalty

Imagine a site where your customers have immediate access to all the information they need from your company -- say, product or service catalogs with full details, pricing and availability, account information, order tracking, and shipping status. Automated support services including a searchable question/answer database or a support bulletin board can be created.

Database WebWorks can design automated notification systems so your customers are quickly notified when special offers or information, relevant to their specific interests, becomes available.

Companies that provide easy access to vital information and personalized customer services inspire customer loyalty and repeat business.