In Webmap's uncustomised form, it doesn't interfere in any way with the interaction between the user and the master website. In this case, the two scenarios depicted above are to all intents and purposes identical. This isn't especially useful of course!
Webmap is however designed to be easily customised, and can change the interaction between the user and the master website in a variety of interesting ways, as described below. Note that all of the examples provided are mutually compatible and can be combined with each other if desired. Furthermore, it is straightforward to use Webmap to deploy multiple versions of a site, all with different characteristics for different groups of users, if required.
Website rebranding
Webmap can be instructed very simply to alter the content of the site that it is ghosting. For example, it can:
- replace logos and images with other images, or hide them altogether
- change fonts and colours, to alter the look and feel of the site
- alter the layout of pages, for example to make them conform to a different user interface model.
Why might rebranding in this manner be useful? Many retailers have affiliate programmes whereby other sites link to theirs and a commission (or similar) is paid for referral of sales. The problem with such referrals is that in linking from the affiliate site to the retail site, the user experiences a change of branding which is off-putting, usually unexpected and almost always undesirable.
Webmap gives retailers the ability, trivially, to produce many distinct versions of their site, each one branded in line with a different affiliate's site. Affiliate sites can then link not directly to the (master) retail site, but to the specific ghost site that is branded consistently with their own. Browsing users need never notice that they are leaving one site and entering another.
Once again, please note that rebranded versions of the master site can be produced without any active co-operation from the owners of that site. The rebranding work could for example be performed by the affiliate instead, using a Webmap server hosted on the affiliate's own network, and then simply approved by the retailer when complete.
Customised website behaviour
In addition to changing the look and feel of a website, Webmap can actually change the way a website behaves - i.e. the functionality it exposes to users. For example, Webmap can be configured to implement any of the following.
- Add new buttons or links onto existing pages to provide access to additional functionality. These new buttons or links could link back to another part of the original website, or to a completely different website, as required.
- Change the behaviour of existing buttons or links on the website. For example, on the shopping basket page of an e-commerce website the button labelled 'buy goods' might be re-directed so that instead of asking for credit card details to complete the purchase, the user is sent an electronic copy of the order they wish to place which can be fed into their in-house purchasing system.
- Remove functionality from a website. For example, it might be required to block access to certain portions of a website for certain users. Webmap can be configured to remove or redirect links that refer to the blocked area of the site, or to intercept any requests that try to access the blocked area.
This ability to actually modify the behaviour of a website, without requiring the website owner to make any changes to the site themselves, is one of Webmap's most powerful features. In combination with the rebranding capability discussed above, it allows a Webmap ghost site to expose as much or as little of the original master site as the Webmap developer wishes.
Activity monitoring and reporting
Because Webmap is an intermediary in the process of users browsing websites, it is privy to every request and response exchanged between them. Webmap can therefore easily perform such tasks as the following.
- Maintain a navigation log of a website, recording which users visited which pages in which order, and which sites (if any) referred them in the first place. These logs could form the basis of various reports, e.g. most successful referrers / affiliates, click-through rates for each of the pages, etc.
- Extract and maintain sales and management data for the site (e.g. for affiliates to track the progress and success rates of their referrals to a retailer).
Essentially, Webmap can be configured to log and report on any aspect of user activity on a website that is of interest.
Automated data collection and data entry
All of the above examples of Webmap usage involve modifying human interaction with a website. But Webmap can also be 'scripted' to perform tasks in an automated manner, tasks that might take a person many times longer to perform.
- Webmap can be configured to gather data from a website. For example, many websites publish information such as product prices, financial data, equity prices, currency exchange rates, etc. Webmap can 'walk' through these sites on a regular and scheduled basis and download the relevant data into a local database, for later use either by a person or another software component.
- Similarly, Webmap can be used to upload data from a local data store to a website. For example, Webmap can transfer a retailer's product information to an online advertising partner (e.g. a search engine's paid listings), without a person laboriously entering the details for each product and updating them when prices change.
There are tools on the market other than Webmap that perform functions similar to these. But none of them has the power and flexibility that Webmap possesses.
Application integration via website ‘API’
Integrating applications or other software components with a third party system (e.g. that of a customer or supplier) typically requires that the third party expose a suitable Application Programming Interface (API) through which the two systems can communicate.
However, a common scenario is that whilst the third party website might expose the functionality for which integration is required to a person using a web browser, there is no suitable API available for a developer to use to perform the necessary integration work.
Webmap can help in this scenario by providing functionality to automatically walk through the relevant pages on the third party website - entering data on forms as necessary and extracting any relevant data displayed on the website's pages. Effectively, Webmap turns the human-oriented website into an API that a developer can use for application integration tasks - again without the third party having to alter their website in any way or provide additional functionality to allow the integration to take place.
This is another powerful application of Webmap that can provide quick and effective application integration solutions in circumstances where other integration approaches are simply not possible.
