The Democratisation of Web Technology

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.

Then, in 2000, a medium-sized company thought it was about time they got on the web. They located a designer who offered to put together the site for $40,000(!).

By 2003, the web had become something which many bricks and mortar businesses were finding could be a genuine source of revenue for them. There were by now hundreds of web design firms, including many specialised design companies, as well as sites where projects could be bid on, including Guru.com and Elance.

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 higher end of highly skilled web designers (the ones who companies will pay for) are starting to shift towards analytical and marketing services rather than technical ones.

Emerging technologies that are democratising the web

The Design of the Site:

There are tools that allow an absolute novice to put together a reasonable looking webpage in under an hour. There are also countless other platforms connected to simple content management systems that allow you to design your own site without touching any code. These tend to lack advanced functionality, but if it’s a simple brochure site you want they can certainly do the job.

Web Analytics:

Not long ago, it took a very skilled specialist to give you any statistics other than page views and hits which you could use. Now, however, there are plenty of cheap or free tools for web analytics which can give users any information they’ll ever need.

Website Conversion Optimisation:

Landing page content analysis has also progressed greatly. Testing alternate landing pages is the heart of conversion optimisation; it used to take specialised software to track visitor behaviour.

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 now free or inexpensive services which offer exactly this sort of testing and analysis. While they also don’t provide much in the way of advanced functionality, they are perfect for the needs of most users.

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 of the web business spectrum, technical knowledge is becoming much less important than are the analytical and marketing skills necessary to increase return on investment.

There will always be a place for highly competent technical people, but I expect to see more mid to low-level tasks done inhouse or outsourced offshore.

In the next several years, where there will be the most growth is in marketing skills to assist companies in increasing their return on investment. Optimising web marketing methods can bring far more value to a business than can investing in new technology.

Author: David B. Ascot shares sales lead generation methods that get results so your company can boom through online lead generation.