The Death of the Website
Written by Mihai Dragan on Saturday, January 9th, 2010 ( 3 responses )
Tags: advertising, brands, interactive, interactive vs conventional, media, startups, website
The website as we know it, at least as a concept, is dying. It has been for the last 5-8 years and now its death is even closer. Let me explain.
A site on the web
If you think about the term it is composed of two words that explain what the concept represents pretty good. A place on the web. It was the perfect way to introduce the concept to the general public. People were already accustomed with the concept of “site”: be it a store, library, house – each of these were built upon a “site”. People would access this site using a address or, in the internet world, a URL.
As with physical address users would visit a certain (or more) sites, based upon their previous experience, friends recommendations and more. In the economic world brands got used to “kindly invite” (or not so kindly as some interactive advertising techniques show us) to the homepage and the user would browse around, consume content and hopefully come back.
The shift in user behavior
That was the case back in the day when the websites count reached numbers of, let’s say, tens or even hundreds of millions of pages. A lot you say. “A more recent study, which used Web searches in 75 different languages to sample the Web, determined that there were over 11.5 billion Web pages in the publicly indexable Web as of the end of January 2005″ states Wikipedia. And that, my friends, was 2005.
What is a user to do in such an environment. Browse? To hard. Visit the same websites? Extremely limiting.
The first big online brand to address this issue was Yahoo that started as a recommendation website founded by Jerry Yang and David Filo. For a short period they had a boom and people would relate to what Yahoo! as a helpful resource in the online jungle.
Things got bigger and bigger. The internet expanded and users needed even more. They needed answers, they needed something to guide them to what they were looking for. Thus Google started a long and successful journey that led to a multi-billion enterprise. Google helped by pinpointing exactly the website on was interested in. And people were thrilled.
Has the internet stopped there? Hell, no.
More and more information hit the interwebs. What was once a resource for mainly text and image documents had turned into the worlds biggest collection of data. Be it photos, documents, books, videos – the world started storing its information in the big reservoir that we call Internet.
So many options, so little time. What to choose?
Going back to basics
People relate to their closest human peers in times of doubt. Not even the mighty Google could replace a kind word or the warm advice a friend is able to offer.
But our friends were already there. People gathered in online social networks and interacted. They would recommend the things they liked asked for advice when needed.
It started with forums, continued with blogs, hit new heights in human interaction with social networks such as social networks and now we have Twitter, the global phenomenon that let people tell one another what are they doing (be it watching TV or fighting a dictatorial regime). Under 140 chars.
Follow the users
The fact is no one ever needed websites. They needed “stuff”. They were on the look for data, a nice gift to buy grandma on her 76th anniversary, a fun video to watch, the coolest hit to download. Never for a simple website.
Being focused on the industry of interactive advertising I will focus on brands and maybe offer good advice. Brands need to realize that their users and potential consumers don’t actually need another website. They need what they want. They want fast answers, they want brands to “follow” or “befriend” them, not the other way around. They have the options and they have the power to select.
Brands are not what they used to be. At this moment the vast majority of Brands are still the big Advertisers that still expect to spend money on big media advertisements and have consumers lining up to their store or website (notice I use the terms pretty close to one another. They are.).
This is not the way. Huge opportunities await those that will follow their users, build presence around their users and still maintain brand awareness and a coherent communication plan.
A short example and some advices
I reached Zynga Poker on Facebook. Played around a little bit on the Facebook app they’ve built. Downloaded the application on my iPhone and bought virtual upgrades with real money. Until today, I have never visited their website. Zynga is a startup that has revenues in the orders of tens of millions of dollars (and growing).
I will leave you with some advices I consider helpful:
- Think outside the website.
- Be present in the social media.
- Stop thinking advertising. Think relationships.
- Build mobile applications.
- Study your market. Close. Closer.
- Develop intelligent applications.
- Let people play with your brand.
- Cut the TV ad budget. Cut the radio and print ad budget. Move online.
- Let people find you on the search engines.
- Follow your consumers and let them follow you.
