Web History: Looking Back to Look Forward


The Web has only just begun to make its mark. We are only in the middle of the beginning of a revolution that is transforming humanity.

Often you find professionals who are frustrated with their websites. This is perfectly understandable. Change can seem quite slow at times. You can also have noticed some websites go backwards for a while.

However, the problem we have as web professionals is that we live daily in the center of the Web. We examine the daily challenges around us. We see the future very clearly, sometimes too clearly and that makes us want to get there as quickly as possible. Sometimes we are too impatient to move forward, but to be able to do that, we need to look backward and upward.

We need to look backward to see all that we have done. You may have noticed that a lot have been achieved in a very short period of time. Look back five years. What did your website looked like? What did management think aobut your website back then? You might be surprised of the solid progress that you have achieved so far.

With the Web only about 10 years old, we are in the middle of the beginning. Something as big as the web cannot be quickly understood by societies and organizations. In fact, societies are ahead of organizations because the Web delivers more benefits them over organizations.

Organizations, particularly larger ones, take time to adapt to major new developments. This is quite normal. We need to look upward because the senior managers in our organizations are often the ones who find it hardest to adapt.

They are far from the web natives. They didn’t succeed by building great intranets or public websites. In most cases, they don’t even use the intranet or public websites that much.

You need to subtly but consistently educate them as to what a proper website should do. You need to be constantly proving to them that your websites are delivering productivity improvements, efficiencies, and generating true value for the organization. Otherwise, you risk them having golf course conversations where they come up with some unrealistic understanding of what the Web is about.

If you are not already educating your senior managers and other important stakeholders, then you should make that a primary objective for this year. But more importantly, you should stand back and take a bow. You have been part of a grand adventure; a pivotal shift in how we work, communicate and live.

The website you are involved with is giving your customers a faster and simpler way to do the things they need to do. That’s good for your customers. It is also good for your organization, and it is certainly good for your long-term career.

The future obviously is: customer-centric.

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