A lot of people ask me why we focus on technology sites. Their reasoning is simple. There’s plenty of other interesting Websites out there with cooler designs and more doodads.

They’re probably right.

On the other hand, good (and even great) IT industry Websites have something to teach everyone.

They market and sell a complex range of products and software – plus the services that make them work. HP.com, for example, has over 10,000 SKUs. A small tech site can have upwards of 10,000 pages under management.

They reach and woo huge, diverse and demanding audiences.  Consumers who are shopping. CIO’s who are bonding. Project managers who are planning. Tech heads who are developing. Investors and journalists who influence the market’s pace. These sites will easily serve over 14 million visitors a month. When you have that many people knocking on your door, there’s not much time to make mistakes.

And that’s just for starters. Once the deal is done, tech sites must deliver mountains of product support information to cranky users 24/7. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, entitled extranets maintain relationships with huge global customers, and distributors and partners selling the company’s wares.

All things considered, tech sites have more moving parts and business strategies than anyone else on the Web. Amazon.com might have “fall off a log” e-commerce, but it doesn’t have to fix my egg cooker when the cord falls out.  My banking site does a great job of displaying my accounts in real time and letting me pay the bills, but it doesn’t have to deliver a gazillion software downloads a day, or contend with millions of developers who are fiddling with the product.

That’s why we focus on technology sites — and why you should too.