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If you aren't hip to web rings -- one of the hottest web shapes around -- your marketing plan may be off-pace with what might just be the next big web-marketing craze.

While Webring.org -- the largest central clearing house and home for web rings -- boasts nearly 25,000 rings, the concept has been slow to appear in corporate web marketing plans although small businesses, particularly non-technical businesses and retailers, have jumped on board in large numbers. Adoption by big business may still be a ways down the line, but don't rule rings out. With some modification, they may be integral to successfully organizing and navigating the web of tomorrow.

Virtually overnight, the introduction of hypertext overturned our standard ways of organizing and receiving information as, suddenly, a range of information became available in a winding, spiraling, collection of networked pages. We've learned a lot in just a few years and have broken some long-standing habits regarding information architecture and targeted marketing to make way for more webcentric approaches.

But when it comes to finding a site, we still tend to think in a straight line. We go to a site, do a search, and then follow a link. Once we're done with that site, we either follow another link (maybe from a "links" page) or return to our search and start all over again. While this works when you are looking for something specific and need to get "in and out" quickly, is this the best way when you want to slow down and just "surf"? Maybe not, but, other than "push," there haven't been many options for alternative surfing patterns, and thinking about how "else" someone might surf hasn't been a touchstone for pundits.

Ring Roots

Webring.org creator Sage Weil was in his teens when he devised his plan for creating large, connected loops of related sites and developed the code for maintaining, monitoring, and allowing users to independently create rings on Webring.org. Belying his age, he eyeballed what the web is all about, what a user wants, and the realities of trying to attract a surfer's attention, and came up with a solution that holds immense promise for the future. Whether or not that promise will also yield profit is a different story, but it's definitely not out of the picture.

In fact, maintenance of the Webring.org site was reportedly recently taken over by a company called Starseed Inc. Details of this sale have been vague, and the rumor-mill has been spinning about the ways in which Webring.org will change under its new ownership. Many expect Webring.org to become more commercialized as a result.

While this isn't a favorable prospect in the eyes of many current ring participants -- and it's not one that Weil has confirmed -- if rings are to make their way into big business, further commercialization will definitely give them a much needed push.

Anatomy of a Web Ring

A web ring consists of a number of sites on the same topic or grouped together because of some other identifying factor (they're all about DHTML; they're all created by women; they're all business sites from a particular country; they all focus on a specific movie; etc.). To surf a ring, all you have to do is take advantage of the links at the bottom of the page in the "web ring block." In almost every case, you'll see the ring's identifying graphic and links to the "next" site in the ring, the "previous" site in the ring, or a "random" site in the ring. You also have the option, in many cases, to see a list of the "next 5" sites in the ring or to view the entire "index" of the ring's sites.

While ring blocks differ with each ring, they tend to resemble the one shown here.

Once you join a web ring, you insert the required bit of code (and accompanying graphics) on your page. The ring owner provides all the material. You slot it into your html file, and that's that. Pretty simple from a maintenance point of view. No special scripting or coding. Plus, webring.org monitors traffic and stats for ring sites.

The size of the snippet above is fairly standard, and before corporate web designers agree to post rings on their sites, the layout and design of ring blocks will likely become smaller, more compact, maybe even able to fit into the common vertical navigation column. Once big businesses begin implementing rings, cosmetic changes are sure to occur, but the principle will likely remain the same: once you begin surfing a ring, there is no clear beginning or ending, just a circle of related material.

Some designers continue to grimace at the thought of the ad at the top of the page, but in the battle between money and aesthetics, the bottom line tends to pull more weight. So, ads litter the pages we surf. We close our eyes and move on. (Okay, so maybe we've all followed an ad or two along the way. And there's always the Mopier Pong ad -- proof that all ads aren't bad.) Given that the web ring material goes at the bottom of the page, the damage to a site's overall design by the insertion of the block is minimal.

A Ring is Not a Banner Ad

Rings may be the next massive marketing trend, and it's important to note that they represent something entirely new. They are a way to advertise, yes. They are a way to group information, yes. But they don't involve random promotion for someone else's site. You are linking to other sites, but the competitor's info -- a lower price, a new product -- doesn't actually appear on your page.

You may be skeptical of web rings, but who would have thought banner ads would catch on the way they did? Ad revenues are big business for many companies, and small businesses and personal sites have been quick to sign up with free banner programs like the Internet Link Exchange. Generating traffic is the name of the game, and the "whatever works" mentality drives the market.

The Proof is in the Numbers

Currently, Webring.org's large number of rings include sites in the following large categories: Arts and Humanities, Computers, Business and Economy, Internet, Health, Recreation and Sports, Entertainment, Society and Culture, and Miscellaneous. Each of these categories is broken down into relevant subcategories, and those subcategories contain numerous individual rings. Rings can contain any number of sites; on average, however, you can expect a successful rings to contain between 20 and 200 sites (some of the rings in the list at right contain 700+ sites). Ultimately, what counts is that there are enough sites in a given ring to make surfing the ring worthwhile from a user's perspective.

Whether or not surfers, trained now to use a search engine or an index like Yahoo! to find sites, will latch onto the ring idea is critical to the future of rings. But today's ring members and owners attest to increased traffic generated by their respective rings. Whether a surfer walk) or landed on a ring member's site by a traditional site-finding method and then, curious, followed the ring links to the next member's site, the result is the same -- more traffic for the sites. The not-to-be-underestimated offshoot of surfing the ring, however, is that the surfer gets a unique surfing experience that delivers pre-sorted content on a given theme.

Sandy Grossman, owner of the Desktop Themes Web Ring, firmly believes that surfers are actively using web rings to browse sites related to a specific interest. She bases her assessment, in part, on the fact that "the Desktop Themes Web Ring has amassed nearly 100,000 hits" since its conception. "Web rings, in general," she continues, "are an excellent way to travel between similar sites without needing to have a search engine page as an intermediary. They speed up search time and greatly enhance any research experience."

Doing away with the go-between search engine results page is, for many, a compelling aspect of the ring concept. Traditionally, you do a search and are presented with a set of results to weed through, only some of which will likely really meet your criteria. Using the results page as a launch pad, you visit a site and then have to "back"-button your way to the results page to make another selection. Depending on how far you travel into a site, crawling back out can seem tedious. With a ring, there's no back-tracking necessary. Once you're done with a site, you simply move on to the next one, and then the next, and then the next. In this manner, you can continually move around the circle without ever going "back" unless it's by choice.

According to Grossman, the duplication of sites in search engines, or the fact that the same site may turn up a number of times in response to a single search, is a big problem. It's likely, too, that this problem will continue to worsen. At the rate with which new sites are added to indexes and registered with engines, there seems to be little time to adequately address issues of maintenance (how many broken links have you followed from a search page?) or refine indexing engines. (In theory, web rings circumvent this issue. In reality, you will run across broken links in rings, too. In the future, it's possible that the scripting which supports the previous/next/random links will be refined to bypass dead links.)

If You Build It, They Will Come

Joe Casadonte Jr., owner of the PerlRing, feels the ring definitely contributes to his site's traffic. "My PerlRing homepage has received at least 316 unique hits in the last 5 days. It's not stellar, but that's at least 50 people a day," he explains. Further detailing the success of the PerlRing, Joe points to an 8 week period (Oct/Nov 1997) in which "the PerlRing as a whole has received 17,437 navigational hits thru WebRing.org directly."

These aren't bad stats for small, non-commercial, sites. Moreover, Webring makes it easy to monitor how successful your ring is. Traffic reports and "top" rings (the ones with the most hits) are easy to find on the Webring site.

Grossman, who used web rings to seek out content when building her own site, says she found the rings such a good approach to navigating information that she decided to start her own. "I had used other web rings (the Sound Ring, for one) when searching the web for components to include in my desktop themes. I also like to check out and collect other people's themes and was frustrated by how difficult it was to get a comprehensive desktop themes site listing. Once the need was identified, I went to Webring.org and started the Desktop Themes Web Ring. It has quickly grown and now has nearly 150 member sites."

Grossman brings up an important point about the way Webring.org is run, today. If there's not an existing ring on a subject, you can start one. Your biggest challenge will be getting other sites to join your ring. In the long run, however, seeking out stellar sites on a related subject could mean more traffic -- and more revenues -- for everyone.

Joining a site is even easier. Paula Weber describes her experience registering with the Boyds Bears and Friends Connection ring in glowing terms. Once her site was ready, the process was quick and painless. She recalls, "It took me literally 5 minutes, and I was done. They responded that hour, and, boom, I was 'in business.'"

Web Ring Glue Comes in All Flavors

In explaining why rings are becoming increasingly useful, Casadonte cites the following description which appears on the PerlRing homepage: "Navigating the web has become increasingly difficult. Doing a search at Alta Vista on 'perl module' or 'perl script' yields 10,000+ hits. The purpose of PerlRing, therefore, is to cut through the noise and make it easier for people to find other Perl homepages."

Casadonte explains the success of rings as, on some level, incidental. The larger idea framing web rings is to amass a group of sites on a similar topic, but you don't have to start a ring surf from the Webring.org page for the ring to succeed. Anytime "someone stumbles upon a hompage that they are interested in, and it is part of a ring on the same topic, they can easily navigate to more pages."

The user who accidentally stumbles into a web ring is important. This is, in fact, how many people first learn about rings. The logic is solid. If you've found a page on a subject you like, and you see a web ring "block" at the bottom, you can safely assume that following the ring will lead you to other pages of interest.

Of course, noting that rings group "common" sites on a variety of levels, Casadonte is quick to point out that the sites in the PerlRing "may have been linked together anyway." A simple search on Perl may yield many of the same sites that the PerlRing includes. But, a ring like the Women in Business Web Ring (currently holding 178 sites) has a very different glue, and the sites in the ring would not necessarily appear together based on a search.

The If It's Purple Web Ring (currently holding 32 sites) is another good example. You couldn't search on "Purple" and find this list of sites. They may or may not have anything in common other than the fact that they have purple elements (background, text, etc). If you're purple-crazy, this will be a fun ring to surf, and only because of the ring is this kind of surfing possible.

This is likely the kind of ring Olivia Stone would call "frivolous." But to her that's not a bad thing; she labels her own ring, The Webring for the Font Obsessed, this way, too. The distinction she makes between "frivolous" and "serious" rings is important. The Webring for the Font Obsessed gathers together sites that have something to do with fonts or use interesting fonts. Fonts are the glue between all these sites, and Stone developed the ring because she knows "many people that use and love fonts." A simple reason, but it speaks to the power of a ring to tie together sites, to build communities of interest among site owners and surfers, to weave a new web experience for the surfer, and to draw connections between sites that may not be obvious in a simple search.

The description on the Winnie-the-Pooh Web Ring further cements the "there's-glue-of-all-kinds" factor. "The Winnie the Pooh webring is for all those Pooh lovers out there. You do not have to have a Pooh page to join the Winnie the Pooh webring, you just have to love Pooh and Tigger and their friends." In fact, a large number of the 222 sites currently registered to this ring are about Pooh.

Mrfree, owner of the Free O'Clock JavaScript site, and member of the JavaScript Webring, believes web rings target users more effectively than banners or site guides. In large part, this is because a user chooses to surf a ring, a fact in direct opposition to the way banners work -- the user doesn't choose which banner ads appear on a site.

"If a user surfs a specific ring, this means he has a real interest for that subject: midi music, freebies, programming languages, etc. So rings are more effective; they reach the best target: a user who is interested in that particular subject, in the subject of your site," says Mrfree.

Next Up -- The Competition

One of the biggest hurdles web rings will face before being adopted by the business sector is the fact that, when you join a ring, you are linking to the competition. Likely this mentality explains why rings have been so popular for personal sites and special interest groups, but have failed to catch on in today's business.

But, again, small businesses and retail-oriented sites have not shied away from rings. For example, rings and banner programs are hot marketing strategies for stores that sell collectibles. This is particularly true for hard-to-find collectibles. Take the Beanie Babies phenomenon, for example. "Not" being on a Beanie web ring, or participating in Beanie-specific banner programs, could be a crucial mistake for vendors. After all, if a customer hits a site, and they don't have a specific "Beanie," the quest isn't over. It's on to the next site, and what better way to get there than via a ring. Your site might just be the next one.

Weber, owner of Meridian Park, and member of the Boyds Bears and Friends Connection ring, says she would definitely recommend a ring as a marketing strategy for small business owners. It's a "way to get lovers of a particular product to your site. If they cannot find what they're looking for at one store, perhaps they can find it at another. Or perhaps it's a way of 'price shopping'? Rings allow them to make sure they're getting the best deal. Instead of driving from one mall to another, they let their modems do it for them. As a small business, I appreciate others like me and would want them to help me, just as I would help them. By having a ring, we're each a small fish that can help each other make a big splash by giving the potential customer options."

This spirit of community speaks to the reason rings work, right now, for many small businesses. Competition may be tough, but drawing traffic is also tough. Whatever methods are available -- either free or at a reasonable price -- are likely to be "tested" by the small business community. There's little to lose, and the payoff could be big.

While Weber had only joined the ring one week before E Business "found" her site via the ring, even in that week she saw impact. "I've had 3 Boyds related emails/phone calls since I joined the ring. None before that." She adds, "I can say that in small business you have to be so very careful where every dime is going. Your money is tied up in inventory. As a small business, you're usually trying to do web design either by yourself or a friend you know does it for you at a low cost. You want to get out on the web because you know that someday (I would guess within the next 5 years) internet shopping will be a more cost-effective way for retailers than a store front. So where you advertise, initially, has to be free or low cost." For retailers like Weber, a ring makes sense. As she has time, Weber plans on joining other rings specific to other areas of her site, and she also plans to use relevant banner programs.

Grossman doesn't sell themes on her Desktop Themes site, but she says, "if I did run a small business, I believe I would still support the ring philosophy. It is consumer oriented and consumer friendly. It is service minded (at least the way we run our ring). Writing to a member site gives one access to all member sites. We often circulate requests for a particular theme among ourselves . . . leading, in the end, to a satisfied customer."

The emphasis on what the ring offers to the customer is key, and it is this potential -- the ability to really tie into a consumer's specific interest -- and a targeted consumer audience -- which businesses will tap when they begin incorporating, modifying, and creating the web rings of tomorrow.

Ring-ing in the Future

So will web rings be a vital part of future marketing and site promotion strategies? What has to change before that happens -- and before rings start popping up on corporate sites?

Stone maintains that rings will someday be a defacto part of the web, and she hopes that businesses do begin to implement rings on their sites. She admits that she rarely follows a banner ad because she finds them annoying. "However, I would probably click on a web ring because I know wherever it is that I am going would have the same topic as the page I was currently at," she says. Stone also envisions businesses creating web rings where sponsors have to 'pay' to join.

Asked what she sees as the future of web rings, Stone responds: "I seriously doubt that web rings will 'wither.' They are too popular and convenient to die out. Things can only start to get better."

Among current web ring users, this is a common sentiment. Grossman views the potential of web rings as very strong. "A web ring may be viewed in much the same way as cable's 'specialized' channels -- like the Food Network. Perhaps people will subscribe to a web ring as a channel of its own."

An interesting concept.

What if there was a ring of Fortune 100 companies. You could just surf from one to the next without having to check urls, do searches, or figure out which companies actually "are" Fortune 100. Envision a shareware ring, a printer drivers ring, a ring of independent web developers, a ring for a companies "partners," and so on.

It could happen.

This article was written by Amy Cowen and is courtesy of E Business Magazine.