Internet consultancy Priocept advices firms on how best to tailor their sites for sophisticated users

Web designers must change their working practices and respond to users' heightened expectations to make the most of Web 2.0 technologies and produce more attractive, usable web sites for firms, according to industry experts.

Greg Murray, co-founder of leading net technology consultancy Priocept, said the range of new technologies bundled under the Web 2.0 banner offers web designers a huge opportunity to create more responsive, successful sites.

"Web 2.0 is about web sites becoming like software rather than being page focused or [following traditional] request-response models," Murray said. "You don't expect Word to take 10 seconds to load, you expect it to be instantaneous and [a technology such as] Ajax [Asynchronous JavaScript and XML] enables this in web sites."

Murray added that designers need to change their working methods to those more commonly associated with software development, such as Agile processes. " The market shift is to Agile development methods [because] you must give the client something to see and interact with," he said. "The people behind Office are used to creating software with a rich user interface and this is now more appropriate to web design."

Designers must also be careful not to repeat the mistakes of the past in cramming web pages full of the latest technology and producing messy sites that are hard to navigate, Murray added.

"In the past some have been guilty of using technology for technology's sake, " Murray said. "Users' expectations are higher now and [firms should focus] on enriching sites with technology that makes them easier to use, more attractive and [easier to] syndicate."

Zamir Cajee, director of web site design company UKWebCo.com, agreed that designers sometimes get carried away with new technology, and advised web development firms to focus on business problems when designing sites. But he added that use of Web 2.0 technologies has yet to take off.

"This is still a developer-driven market," Cajee said. "Most of our customers see the web as an information source but not how much more powerful browsers [are]. Web 2.0 is exciting but we're not getting people phoning and [asking for it."