The Porous Web

I often see clients who ask me to assist them in developing the specs for a a website. While it is important to have some kind of digital real estate, it is more important to look at how people use the web these days.

From our audience point of view the Internet is one great big environment from which they can consume information, engage with each other and entertain themselves.

Our domain is only one place they can go to do this, but there are multiple other places. We need to consider the entire environment. The website is only one element of our conversation on line. These days our audiences practice osmosis as they flow from places of low value to high value.

High value is a product of information and context. Information is available everywhere, but if it can’t be found or it does not come from a trustworthy source its value is compromised. So how do we make sure that we deliver high value in this porous environment? We do this by designing our projects around audiences through content architectures, digital geographies, SEO and curatorship.

Content Architectures

Content architectures are thought constructs which examine how we wish to position ourselves in our audience minds, and what we need to say or do in order to achieve this. They require a thorough investigation into our audience’s motivations, worlds-views and environments.

Digital Geography

Digital geography is concerned with where our audiences are, are they on social media sites, looking through lists, browsing or on special interest sites. Do we need to make sure that we have a presence on Facebook, Twitter, Insta, TikTok or that on-line newspaper? What industry forums are they consulting, who are the thought leaders?

SEO

These days, very few people type in the name of our domain to find us, they are far more likely to go to their preferred search engine, whether it be Bing or the ubiquitous Google and type in a search term. If we can’t be found easily, we have wasted our efforts. We need to make sure that whatever we put out there can is as search engine friendly as possible.

Curatorship

Curatorship is the human intervention which adds value. These are trusted sources of information who assemble information and contextualise it. They may be thought leaders, bloggers, on line journalists or even someone inside our own company who engages with our audience or who they follow or engage with to filter the masses of information out there and make it easy to consume.

Far too many companies develop website strategies, but to create competitive advantage in the digital world, we should rather create digital strategies which encompass the entire digital milieu.

To find out more about Digital Bridges, please contact Kate Elphick on kate@digital-bridges.co.za