The Problem

Traditional web marketing experiences take too long to implement, are expensive, and have questionable ROI. As a marketer, how long from when your creative team first showed your new web concept was it actually implemented? 3 months? 6 months? More…? What if customers don’t end up engaging your idea? Or they initially engage, but traffic drops after just a few days? How many other cooler ideas have you seen out there while you were waiting for your site to be developed?

If only there was a way to engage customers with new marketing experiences as quickly as your creative team can generate concepts without the use of IT…

The Benefit of the Cloud

Fortunately the cloud is starting to offer an answer. Amazon offers customers the ability to host static websites on AWS, often for mere dollars a month. The site itself is stored in AWS S3 storage buckets. The site can be tied into the CDN service CloudFront to offer ultra-fast download times around the globe. Domain DNS records can even be managed through Route 53 to centralize the whole offering.

The feature is about a year old at this point. Jeff Barr at AWS posted a good starting walk through article if you are interested in looking through some of the implementation details.

What has changed over the last year is the increase of HTML5 expertise, examples and adoption (supported browsers and compatible devices). For many companies the entire creative experience can be managed through HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files that can be hosted on AWS. 

Not convinced? Try this exercise. List all the tasks involved in building your last web initiative. Would a team using workable prototypes that could be deployed when approved have provided a shortcut to endless review cycles of static wire frames, mock ups, and development?

Offer Cloud Services as a Base IT Offering

Now before we get too far into this, I am not advocating Marketing does not need IT. Instead IT needs to provide Cloud Services as a core offering. This would include managing cloud setup, DNS, billing, any EC2 servers (if needed), and governance.

Once enabled, a properly managed Cloud Service can allow Marketing to create new campaigns without involving IT in day to day business activities and decisions.

Think Hybrid or Feel Limited

Hosting sites on AWS S3 is not a panacea and there are some limitations. The first a team will likely encounter is that any server side functionality (PHP, ASP.NET) is not available. This is again where a properly managed Cloud Service comes into play. IT can serve dynamic server content either through the cloud on EC2 servers or on local infrastructure. Many companies try to lump Marketing and IT services together into a combined solution. Problems arise from this approach usually involving enterprise data and other dynamic functionality. The end outcome is the new marketing experience schedule gets aligned to the implementation timeline and maintenance processes.

An Example AWS Website

I am an independent management consultant running a practice in Seattle called Collistic. Recently I launched my website Collistic.com on AWS. The model allows me and others to quickly update my web experience and see cost savings.