What it means to be an integrated digital provider
I’ve been around this web stuff long enough now to have seen a few changes; over 11 years now in the field.
I remember when the web was something that a designer, who had some basic hack code skills, could weave into a commercial offering. What I mean of course is turning graphics into ‘brochure-ware’. By 1999 I was excited by contact forms and dhtml. Patrick and I even won an international award from Macromedia for our DHTML work. But that stuff sort of faded away as content management systems (CMS) came to the fore and the priority moved to content rather than graphics.
By 2000 we had custom written our own CMS and over the next few years things changed massively in that space. Open source offerings, a vast myriad of commercial proprietary products, and even half-arsed things from players like Macromedia (Adobe now) made the space very confusing for the market. Microsoft made some god awful stuff too. Bless their little hearts.
There were a few players back then like Spike that were really serious. Only a few years ago someone showed me some specification plans from early last decade. Gosh. It shakes you up a bit when you see how far ahead of the curve people like that were. I mean, we love our planning and take massive pride in our specification work but people like that could have written a book about it. I digress.
Usability and user planning and proper use case identification has been core to our work for over 5 years and we keep tuning our methods. But the touchpoints and the use of the web is changing and we need to create new methodologies to have more open thoughts about what our users want. Closed thinking about traditional web uses worries me. Think of mobile, think of non html web use like the IPAD.. hmmm.
Anyway, so by mid last decade CMS was a commodity, web 2.0 starts to hit, and people start to realise (conceptually of course) that the web is a business tool, a massive communication device, and indeed a cornerstone for pretty much anyone who needs to be in touch with anyone else.
We as a business hid from search engine optimisation SEO for a while and tried to work with partners to build capacity BUT sure enough it’s something that now needs to be an integral part of our offering. But the game changes with that everyday too. And despite the fact that the majority of our clients don’t properly market their websites they tend to universally acknowledge the buzz around SEO and rank it high in their top 10 issues right now. It’s so important that it affects their buying decisions. The problem with SEO is people think that’s it, ‘do’ and you’re done. But it’s not! Digital marketing as we now affectionately know it is a vast issue. SEO is a key part of our offering now and we’ve signed a partnership deal (exclusive) with one of the worlds largest SEO firms out of the UK. More on that later….
Integration across all media and proper integration between digital campaigns and your digital assets is the real problem now.
Don’t worry. We’re onto that too and building campaigns and strategies for our key clients. Feel free to drop us a line to see what we’re up to.
A bit of a ramble this month but it has been a while.
And a ramble well worth having, thanks Glen.
I found myself this week trying to explain your point about SEO to a Baby Boomer. I ended up pinning my explanation to a Car Maintainance analogy: to keep any vehicle running efficiently etc, you need the regular ‘tune up’.
Of course the metaphor doesn’t fit perfectly. I need to find something better, as I may not get away with it next time…
What everyday thing/process needs to regularly be modified, adapted, evolved etc in order to keep yielding results like SEO?
I’ve got myself stumped, which (annoyingly) is not that hard for me to do these days.
Joe, Thanks for the comment.
Car maintenance is not quite the right way to describe the issues here. The web, the users, SEO, convention, needs, expectations, are all changing. I suppose a few years back you’d buy a car without ipod connection but now it’s expected. If you try to use the car analogy I’d put it this way.
The car was designed for a human of particular needs at the time of its release, let’s say a 2004 Holden. Now, my expectations of that Holden are different and the design, features, and possibly how it works will also be different. That’s easy to understand and certainly deals with shifting consumer demands but that’s only part of it. The roads are changing, the signs on the road may be no longer useful or mean anything to you or your car. In fact, when it comes to html, and the use of the web, it’s kind of like saying that the road is becoming redundant.
What does that do to the effectiveness of the car?
Does that help….
My point is that it’s not just the consumer needs or expectations that keep shifting with the web, but the fabric and infrastructure that it sits in too.
Glen