Future Websites

The cozy times are gone. Interactive media and especially the Internet are changing with breathtaking speed. What was right yesterday could be wrong today, let alone tomorrow. The power of visions, an endless striving for innovation, preparation to take risks and ongoing adaptation will be important factors for long-term and lasting success. Because you have to anticipate the Internet of tomorrow already today if you want to create successful web solutions. Proper strategies to that end are not easy to find.

The Internet -- Yesterday
Despite its originally military intentions, the Internet quickly became an important medium for universities and scientists. The primary benefits were information and communication -- so horizontal lines were about the only graphic design elements, and interactivity was confined to e-mail forms.

Yet, soon companies started to discover the new possibilities that the Internet offered -- without, however, really developing a true understanding of the medium. So existing archives were merely dumped unto the websites, resulting in the term "brochure-ware" to be developed for these kinds of sites. Hardly any links, no interactivity, no personalization, no dynamic -- the unique possibilities that the medium offered were left unused. However, companies forgot that a website is also a sort of business card for themselves -- and hence better be an integrated element of the overall communication strategy.

Next, every respectable company wanted to become a portal ("We want to be the Yahoo! for shoe-laces!"), and to build a community was the target of every second site (don't ask about the companies that wanted portals with a community). Unfortunately, only a few wondered where the community was supposed to come from. And what a community was exactly, to begin with.

Then, "e-commerce" was the name of the game. However, it was usually limited to a shop in the WWW, a sort of catalogue with an order-form. The site-owner was proud, the agency was paid tons, only the customers didn't show up. The excitement was gradually replaced by dismay, with companies having to recognize: Just doing stuff and being busy is not a replacement for a proper strategy.

The Internet -- Today
In the meantime, the husks are separated from the grain. Most of the groups of students, who built a homepage for the price of a pizza, are now gone. The "old economy", word of disgrace of yesterday, is trendy again. And old-fashioned profits are more "in" than ever.

A lot of companies are re-evaluating their Internet-strategy, or discover that they actually could use one. Web-projects are not the responsibility of the marketing department anymore, let alone the IT folks, but are conducted by cross-functional staff teams with considerable decision power.

However, not only web-agencies are facing natural selection, also businesses can increasingly be split into two groups:

The one group is still trying to transfer existing processes onto the Internet and hence try to force-fit the old world on a new medium.

The other (more visionary) group is actually using the new media in order to re-design their structures and processes. By doing so, they develop new revenue streams or streamline existing processes. In the end, the new technology is thus increasingly growing into the company and gradually revolutionizes almost all business structures. The term "e-commerce" is replaced by "e-business", requiring a much more comprehensive understanding: It is not "making profit in the web" anymore, but "making profit with the web."

The Internet -- Tomorrow
Also tomorrow, fundamental underlying laws of the market will continue to hold true; still, a lot will change, too.

In the fight for the scarcest good of all -- (online) attention -- marketing as a discipline will experience a fundamental mindset shift. Honesty, transparence, personal relations and consumer-orientation are already becoming the mantra of a new generation of "Consumer Managers", replacing the term "Brand Managers."

Dynamic consumer profiles are replacing the concept of static target groups; target groups become target persons. "Perceived 1:1 marketing" will be the new paradigm. Because you don't build a relationship with a customer -- you earn it.

The stop watch is replacing the calendar as a metaphor for a new speed by which decisions have to be made, sounding the bell for a new age of a "trial-and-error"-philosophy: not 100% perfection but speed and the ability to adapt quickly will be the key success factors.

The advantages of the Internet will finally get used: the opportunity to establish interactive dialogues and to create services with added-value will invite the customer to actively participate; He will become co-author and an integrated element of the strategy.

As a result, the websites of tomorrow will be substantially different from today. Because they will

• respect the unique characteristics of the Internet and hence, for the first time ever, actually make use of the advantages that the medium offers
• make the target customer and his needs be the most important element, and do not try to be everything for everybody
• recognize that it is not about merely information -- but about added-value in all the forms possible
• don't have just content, but content + context + services (i.e., relevant content, within the right context, with services that fit and add value)
• recognize that customers don't necessarily come by themselves, but must be fetched from where they are -- laying out the red carpet by means of clever site-marketing will be key
• know that constant innovation and new services will be among the most important means to differentiate
• measure, evaluate, adapt; measure, evaluate, ...
• are never finished!

This is a lot more difficult to achieve than it may sound; because it requires a shift in thinking, and professionalism, persistence as well as the basis of a strategy well thought-through will be among the most important success factors.

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