A more exciting web?
Overview: Despite many great advances in web technologies, web sites are still teeming with traditional media tactics.
During a recent meeting of the minds, okay it was really just a few Web-Dev friends and myself sharing adult beverages at a local Gin-mill, the subject of boring web sites became the topic of discussion for the evening.
Our real interest was in the lack of originality behind most sites, our own included. With the steady advancement of high-speed connections among internet surfers, developing an entertaining online data distribution model is more than just possible, the technology is beyond the usage already.
Some studies have shown that most web surfers prefer a more entertaining presentation when visiting sites over straight data delivery. The mantra of ‘give someone an article and they’ll read it, show them a visual narrative and they’ll experience it’ seems to carry weight online.
Add in that current technology not only allows a webmaster to convert their data into very entertaining presentations, but also adds the capability of user interactions within those presentations and it boggles my mind how few web sites and businesses seem to be taking advantage of this.
Think of the big picture, all of the advantages found in print media, all of the advantages of audio/visual media and all of the advantages of software capabilities rolled together into an ultimate web site experience. That’s what can be…
However, one reason posed for the lack of more exciting, experience-based web sites is the cost associated with it. Not production costs, productions can be as cheap or expensive as the site developer wants to make them. I’m talking about the cost of serving audio/visual presentations over static web pages to visitors. Since the files and processing resources needed to present audio/visual presentations are much larger than the more traditional text and image web site, better server/network hardware and higher volumes of bandwidth are required. If you have a popular web site this can become very costly.
I really believe this to be the major factor preventing webmasters from building more entertaining, experience-based sites.
So, how do we overcome this? Traditional media revenue tactics haven’t panned out online. Banner and other “Click Here” advertising has shown to generate very minimal revenue for advertisers, meaning less revenue for site producers displaying the ads.
Several companies have tried to unite the web with television by introducing commercials into web sites and audio/visual presentations. One example of this can be found here. But, this too has seemed to be less than effective.
I think the big problem is while people are willing to pull out their credit cards and do business online, the average Internet consumer seems to prefer searching their purchases out rather than being influenced by web site advertising.
Marketing companies and other businesses have been slow in wrapping their heads around the concept, so they keep running into the same brick walls over and over — paying pennies to web publishers for displaying advertising which has little to no attraction with the majority of surfers who see it.
Until this changes, and online businesses learn to embrace the habits of web surfers rather than try to change them, boosting their own revenue and generating higher returns for web publishers we’ll probably continue to be stuck with the same old web.
That’s just my input though and it may not display properly in everyone’s screen resolution…