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There are few websites out there that could claim your point of entry to the web - that all important default home page. The BBC is taking a step in the right direction this week, with a little help with some AJAX, to allow you to customize your own BBC home page.

It’s a big step and an important one for the British Broadcasters and I am sure they will get some converts. I am a big fan of the BBC and think I get excellent value for my licence fee (feel free to throw tomatoes at me). They won’t convince me to change my home page though as it doesn’t give me enough immediate access to the web - I still need Google.

With this move though, they could allow widgets for even more customization in the future.

So, although I won’t shift from my iGoogle page, I will be moving things around on my very own BBC homepage for those visits I do make.

They’ve even got it to validate. Makes me want to stick my chest out.

I have never been a fan of content managed systems, but then again, I can create web pages hard coded (to a fashion - I still need our web team). That is until we created our own CMS.

Anyway, a recent project for website management and online marketing led me to use it for Creative Systems and I am a convert, having created most of these pages within about three hours yesterday.

The website is live and it’s a work in progress - I shall be adding more today. That, is the beauty of CMS for online marketing (ours anyway). Each page I create can be specific with title tags, meta descriptions, page names, headings, etc.

I will be doing a case study on this one in a couple of months time so I’ll let you know how we get on.

I often ask clients if they really need some of the stuff on their web pages - images, videos, etc. I also make a big point of talking about hosting that delivers a quick server response.

E-Consultancy talk today about trials Google are running against Adword landing pages and quality score (also covered by Search Engine Land). Corroborated by Google on their FAQ page:

“The AdWords system re-evaluates landing pages on a regular basis (approximately once a month). If you make significant improvements to your website’s load time, you should see an improved Quality Score and lower minimum cost-per-click (CPC) bids. Note that your Quality Score may update incrementally over two to three months after you improve your load time.”

If they are prepared to do this to their own advertising system, what about your natural rankings?

Due to growth (and Alex leaving) we are recruiting at The Escape:

• Middleweight creative - working on some sexy creative work - both traditional brand and marketing, as well as design for web and online.
• Copywriter - We need someone to help create content for our clients and you may learn a bit of SEO along the way.
• Project manager - someone experienced to hit the ground running.

If you are hungry for change follow the links.

A bit late in now but I needed a snappy title. I thought I’d share my web predictions for 2008.

Feel free to come back in December and rub them in my nose if I am wrong - like that is gonna happen!