Mustardseed Media Inc.

When To Use Offsite Services

When I begin a new project with a client, I always take time to ask about the current state of their website and try and see where it can be improved or streamlined so it makes more sense to their visitors. Sometimes, this process is easy and obvious. Maybe they're just using Front Page or Dreamweaver to create static html pages and don't really have any dynamic content. In that case, we'll be changing the approach by adding dynamic content which didn't exist before. No problem.

However, sometimes it's not quite as straight forward. There are cases where potential clients are using, what I call, a "hybrid" site setup. This type of site lives somewhere between the Web 1.0 (fully static) site type and the full blown Web 2.0 Content Management System style website. Usually, in the distant past, the client had a website that was purely static. But somewhere along the way, they saw the need to start adding more dynamic functionality such as easy to update image galleries, event calendars, and blogs. But, because of the many options that exist on the web for very low cost, they started to host all of these new functionalities on a bunch of different services.

Maybe they started hosting their photos on flickr.com and their events on mychurchevents.com. This seemed like a great solution because it was easy to setup and easy to add content to. They just put links on their current static site pointing to these services and Blamo!: their website now contains dynamic content.

But, does it really? All of this stuff is actually hosted off-site. What does this do to the visitor who is browsing the site? What does this do for site dynamics, organization and interaction? When is it a good idea to use these outside services and when is it not? In the following paragraphs I'll try and convey some of my guidelines that I use on this and hopefully it will help you see the options available to you...

Why not use offsite services?

A geeky friend of mine is really hot on "mashups". Mashups are a new concept in web design where you take services from many different places and gather them all together on a single website, "mashing your data" all into one place. He always says "Mashups are the future of the web!". And, I believe he's right. But I would argue that mashups are difficult to implement properly and are far from mature. It's going to take some time before they're usable in the proper way.

Normally, when you implement many different services onto a single site you add a bunch of problems for your web visitors...both conscious and unconscious problems. Here's a few issues:

1. All your content should have your branding When you use offsite services usually you don't have many options to style your content (fonts, colors, layout, etc). The content's look is dictated by the outside service. This isn't good. It kills continuity of style on your website and makes your visitors wonder if they're still looking at your content or someone else's.
2. Visitors shouldn't ever leave your site A big problem with offsite services if they're implemented in the most common way, is you're sending your site visitors away from your site, often without telling them first. Let's say I'm a visitor on your website. I click on your calendar link and suddenly, without knowing why, I'm on some website that looks totally different, has a different layout, and no longer is using your branding or color schemes. As a site visitor, you just confused me. Did I leave your site on purpose? How do I get back? Where'd all the main menu items go? Confusing a visitor is bad...and anytime you direct them off your site, you're confusing them.
3. When your content is off-site, you can't use it. Let's say I want my next 5 events to automatically show up on my site's homepage (a very good idea!). If my event calendar is a part of my website and on my server, that's no problem. It's all integrated into a single system, which makes data manipulation easy. But, what happens if your data is on another server somewhere and in another format? That makes it very difficult to re-use your data in really interactive ways on your website. The bottom line is: It's your data, keep it within your system and it will be easier to use and minipulate.

When to use offsite services

Those are just a few reasons that offsite services aren't good for your website. But that doesn't mean offsite services are NEVER good...let's look at the right times to use them:

1. Save bandwidth! Many Web 2.0 services such as flickr, youtube, or blip offer amazing opportunities to save storage space and traffic on your webhosting package. If you're hosting lots of large media files, there's ways to use outside services to host your files for free, and still integrate them nicely into your website, which brings us to....
2. The service should have transparent integration When we talk about the future of mashups this is what we're talking about. If you're going to use an outside service, that service should allow you to display your content on your site in a way that, ideally, makes the outside service invisible. Visitors should never have to leave your site to view the content...they should be able to view it all right on your site without even knowing it's hosted elsewhere. This removes visitor confusion while making good use of outside services.
3. You need to style your content If you're using an outside service, you should only use those that allow you to style your content to exactly match the look and feel of your site. This goes one step beyond the previous reason by allowing your content to, not just be on your site, but have your branding as well.

Think before you sign up

So, again, the goal is to give the website user a good experience. If they're going offsite, viewing content that doesn't look like the rest of your site, or they have to put up with ads or logos from other services, you're better off hosting your own solution.

As the web moves forward, these mashups with become more and more integrated, which is how they should be. But it's not quite there yet...so, as of now, ask yourself if you can implement the outside service transparently enough that you can keep your visitors in the dark about which services power your website.