Today is “World Wide Web Day”, when we are encouraged to celebrate the creation of the WWW. Nobody quite knows why today was selected as a global day of celebration of the web. The date does not coincide with Tim Berners-Lee’s original proposal for the web. That was submitted on 12 March 1989. Nor is it the date on which the phrase “World Wide Web” was suggested. That was 12 November 1990. And it is not the date on which the first website was publicly announced. That was 6 August 1991. So quite why today, 1 August, is “World Wide Web Day” is anyone’s guess.
Even so, it gives us all a chance to reflect on what the web has achieved for us. It’s given us access to information like never before. It has given billions of people new opportunities to create, collaborate and publish their work. Plus, we’ve been able to communicate in real time anywhere in the world. In its 35 years of existence, the web has achieved an amazing amount for humans.
Of course, it has not been all good. The web has helped create online trolls, for example, and it has spread violent pornography as well as enabling organised crime gangs to become more powerful. On top of this, it has allowed the production of some truly dreadful web pages that look horrendous and are impossible to navigate. Let’s hope that the Norwegian shopping site, Arngren, is not one of your favourites.
However, it has also meant that many businesses now rely on the web for day-to-day communications and all their marketing. I know of one business, for example, that claims the “only” way to get customers is through sponsored links on search engines. They even point me to the “evidence” showing me all the business they got through these adverts. Of course, they don’t have any data on people who could buy their service through other means, as they rely solely on the web.
That’s a shame, because they could probably increase their business if they looked outside the web. However, the problem extends beyond marketing. Whenever an organisation moves an activity online, it risks losing information that exists only in human relationships and physical settings. Indeed, recent research from YouGov shows that most people discover new products through recommendations from family and friends. Good, old-fashioned word of mouth is still more important than anything the web provides, it seems.
Similarly, when looking at what makes people buy from a company, a recent study suggests that the Top 10 factors do not appear to include anything specifically related to the company website.
The convenience of the web and the ability to be creative and have great-looking websites is a bit of an illusion for businesses. They can produce something wonderful, track all the activity and then believe they have done all they need to do to attract customers. We can get vast amounts of data about our clients’ web activity, so it is easy to forget they live the bulk of their lives outside the web. Even the magazine Search Engine Land appears to be suggesting it may be time to do less online than we have in the past.
This all coincides with the new UK Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, suggesting that businesses should focus more on real-world recruitment rather than virtual interviews. Before the Prime Minister made that announcement, I heard a recruitment expert on the radio talking about the same topic. He pointed out that recruiters get so much more information from being in the same room as a job applicant. His point was not that web technology has no place in recruitment, but that excessive reliance on it may prevent employers from seeing qualities that emerge more clearly through personal interaction.
Back in the summer of 1991, when the web began, the Number One song was “(Everything I do), I do it for you” by Bryan Adams. It looks like we’ve taken that rather too seriously, expecting the web to do everything for us. Perhaps today of all days it is time to reflect on the real position of the web in our business. Maybe, just maybe, it can’t do everything.
