I was talking the other day to a colleague about website building. He told me that in the mid-90s, a government agency allotted a budget of $400,000 for websites, not knowing what it would cost.
A few years later, a company decided that they needed to establish an online presence. They found a web designer, who told them that for a mere $40,000, their site could be built.
Fast forward to 2003 - the Internet had started to mature and become a viable revenue-generator for most ‘offline’ product and service businesses. A wide range of web design companies and specialist firms had sprung up in addition to clearing houses such as Elance and Guru.com.
Companies were paying for people who understood this new technology. It’s much like the early days of automotive technology, when anyone who could afford a car would also have their own mechanic to take care of the then impenetrable technologies behind their car.
Now, we’re seeing this trend of ‘democratising the web’ continue, and the geeks in the middle are getting squeezed out and commoditised. The technologies for building and managing websites are becoming more and more accessible and user-friendly.
The top 20% of highly technically skilled web designers are beginning to make a transition towards marketing and analytical skill rather than emphasising solely technical expertise.
Emerging technologies that are democratising the web
Site Design:
There are now a lot of choices for software which anyone can use to build a relatively good looking website in an hour or less. There are also a lot of user-friendly content management systems which let users design a website without ever seeing any code. While these programs usually don’t have a lot of advanced features, they work fine for any simpler sort of website.
The Analytics of the Site:
Only a few years ago, you needed a specialist in order to pull any useful statistics from your site other than page views. However, there are now a wide variety of cheap or free tools which can give you all of the data you could possibly want.
Optimising the Site:
Multivariate analysis of landing page content is another area that has come a long way. Testing different landing page versions is one of the core techniques of website conversion optimisation. Traditionally it has involved setting up software to serve and track different content.
As someone who provides these kinds of services, I think that a lot of companies feel like what they are paying for is the technical aspects (method) more so than for the marketing aspect (results).
There are new services, some of which are free which provide this kind of testing. They don’t offer a lot of advanced features, but work fine for the majority of uses.
Anyone who offers conversion optimisation is going to need to be sure that the added value of their marketing techniques is sufficient to attract clients as the technical aspects become demystified.
At the lower end especially, technical smarts are getting squeezed out and commoditized in favour of the marketing and analytical skills required to make sense of data and turn it into improved outcomes (i.e. Return On Investment).
While there will always be a place for those who are highly skilled in web technologies, I expect to see a growing number of simpler technical duties being offshored.
Where there will be growth is in the area of teaching and implementing marketing techniques which will help companies to make their web presence more profitable. Understanding and optimising online marketing can be more valuable to companies than capital investments in new technologies.
About the author: Mr David B. Ascot shares sales lead generation strategies that work so your business can boom through online lead generation.
Tags: Internet Marketing Consultants, Online Lead Generation, Online Marketing Consultant, Sales Lead Generation