The next generation: Websitebuilders 2.0

My first program I wrote using hypertext technology was in 1993, the first time I created an html page was in 1995. It were times of discovery and very ugly interfaces, using black backgrounds and green letters, like the 1970 unix terminals.  In that time anybody who new html and some cgi programming had a job as a designer , programmer and webmaster at the same time.

 Then there was this time of upgrading browsers, and plugins, better java, flash, pdf’s etc. and there was always new things to learn. And companies learned how to create better websites with better technologies that people actually visited. Words like findability and usability appeared.

But there still was no real idea of what would make a website successfull.

Nowadays you can see the buzz about findability, availability, accessability, trust, usability, and relevance when talking about successfull websites. The softer the goal (like usability and relevance) the harder it gets for them.

What is obvious at this moment  is that most websitebuilders have mastered the technology, and will continue to do that, but that the gap towards the softer skills is difficult to master, and getting the website aligned to the business instead of the other way round really is a challenge.

Only few can really say they help add significant value to their clients business in building the website. Full service internet companies that help their clients to reach success with their website afterwards are really scarce at the moment. Yet I believe the websitebuilder company 2.0 should be just that, full service, from strategy till website management, supporting the client all the way to success.

That the 2.0 company will have a different business model is obvious, it will collect on the success of ot’s client, not on the work done. 

A Win-win situation!

 

Validating your idea

While on hollyday, i’ve been reading a book called the marketing guru’s by chris murray. It’s a summary of many important books in marketing.

One of these summaries is about the popcorn report by Faith Popcorn, which is a report about trends that are (going to) happen in the consumer world. I found this very interesting, because a new product and service should in most cases connect to a main trend to stand a chance in the marketplace. This could be a powerfull tool for validation of ideas.

This week i applied the trends to a new website and drew some conclusions on how to improve on it by adhering to more trends. A talk with the projectmanager showed that the second release will have most of the funtionalities i saw, just by using these trends!

On her businesses website she says the trends are not rocketscience. “The decisive force in every successful marketing effort, today and in the future, is cultural relevance”. Translating the trends into producs and services and communication is the real trick.

But to be able to do that you should know where the product or service hooks up with that culture, and there the trends are very usefull.

Just by checking what trends apply to your service, and which almost, you can adapt your idea to include more trends, which will make your potential for success bigger. There still has to be an underlying customer value proposition though.

As an example,some energy-companies use these trends blatantly: one sells “green energy” (save our society trend), the other one calls on our nationialistic sense and beliefs (clanning). Both started selling the same product basically. The green energy company though, has altered the product, separating it from the other, using a trend.

 

Strategic activity: Consumer intelligence?

As communication and collaboration with and between consumers is becoming so cheap and the base of online customers so huge, the old marketing discipline of market research is getting a new impulse and as it appears(google it), even a new name.

I believe there is room for a consumer intelligence activity or department which should be a second view out of the company, next to (or integrated in the competitve and business intelligence departments, which keeps taps on consumers, and collaborations between consumers. But that is what marketing does you’ll say.

The difference is that this department should engage in communicating with these clients, getting those customers to collaborate with the company, making the (new and existing) businesses products, processes and services better for those clients. And that is something maketing never will do.

I’m not sure though if what i see in the results of google is even remotely near this interpretation I defined of this word. Many businesses still lack the “2.0″ consumer view. Time will tell what’s the hype and what’s the real useful part.