Don’t put your showroom on a backstreet
When we first started designing websites, they were more like sculpture than a magazine. They were difficult to produce. Hand-crafted. Built to be prominent and to last.
Since then of course, things have changed dramatically. All kinds of things have become possible. Things like blogs (like this one), which have all but replaced ‘news’ pages. Things like linked outbound email, which can alert your audience (or a section of it) that something has happened on the site that they might just like to see. And of course, the ‘special privilege’ section of the site that no one but those whom you nominate can see.
These changes have undermined those ‘statues’. Static statements are just as old-fashioned as those sites that can’t be seen or read using the mobile devices that are being used now for up to 35% of web traffic. Their popularity has waned like a movie without sound.
Most of all, it is continued updating and continued ‘currency’ that visitors of all kinds want to see. That means taking issues head-on, having a view and expressing it (isn’t that what leaders do?), being topical and making a contribution to debate as well as just showing your product range.
The companies who can do all this are the ones that are gaining traction and business through the web. Others have opened their fancy showrooms on the backstreets of the internet where few people will visit.