This last year, ... has been all the rage. Going back a year or so,Java applets were hot. That is, the public ... of websites was ... websites had ... or Java applets on the
This last year, ecommerce has been all the rage. Going back a year or so, Java applets were hot. That is, the public perception of websites was that "good" websites had ecommerce, or Java applets on them.
If we go back before the applets, say three years ago, streaming video, vivo, was the "hot" topic. There is not a lot of talk of streaming video anymore. It has been incorporated into the universe of web design, and has cooled considerably as a "hot" topic.
This is mostly because people have realized that streaming video has huge bandwidth. That even 30 minutes of quality programming is quite expensive to produce, and that we already a very effective streaming video technology filled with desultory content.
There seems to be a laypersons metric of website quality, but this metric is froth on the sea, and changes with time. The issues involved in truly measuring website quality are subtler and more long-term. A website's quality or effectiveness cannot be assessed by simply pointing to the presence or absence of a particular feature.
This past year, the media have focussed heavily on ecommerce, as a buzzword, but this buzzword is almost never defined.
If we take ecommerce as the current laypersons metric, hmmm, well, what is it? Do we mean the capacity to process purchases online, secure server and closed sales? This is great, but only part of the picture, many businesses want and need to create interest without needing to close a sale online.
If we take a wider definition of ecommerce, we might come up with something like: websites designed for easy use, whose primary purpose is commercial. Such websites frequently also allow online purchasing, but their first and foremost function is to provide product information. Some sales will close online, but many will not.
For example, several years ago, I used the Web to find a hotel near where our family reunion would be held. I saw that they had an indoor pool, and so I knew to take swim shorts in February. No money was transferred across the net, but all arrangements were made in advance of our arrival. I never did actually use the pool, but my options were more open.
I consider this to be a perfect example of ecommerce.
As web designers, we need to recognize that many ecommerce systems can be interfaced as needed to other tech, and that ecommerce as narrowly defined will only ever apply, with maximum saturation, to a segment of the market.
The high tech companies contribute to these bad metrics. Both in sales and in hiring, companies talk in terms of ASP, CGI, VBScript. To the average business person, these terms are not helpful. Quite the opposite. They create a "cognitive barrier". Jargon is useful within a specialized group, but actually impairs communication between groups.
By talking jargon to non-technical people, we actually make what we as web designers and IT architects do, harder for them to understand.
We can use a narrow definition of ecommerce, and we therefore have a situation in which ecommerce modules can typically be rented for $50 a month and plugged into existing websites.
Or we can take a wider definition, one which includes customer service, product support, complaints and returns-handling, and, of course, online sales as indicated. This is not a $50 solution, not something that can be cooked up in a day or a week.
Instead, design of an effective ecommerce solution requires care, expertise, and the experience of the client. The flow and arhitecture of the site, the content and emphasis, must be designed with
The industry as a whole is best served if we try to be less technically and more "user" oriented. That is, to talk not in terms of CGI, Java or JavaScript or ASP, but rather in terms of catalogues, shopping baskets, and currency converters. If we submerge the technology and instead focus on the functionality, then indeed terms such as ecommerce become far more meaningful.
But more than this, each website can then be geared to individual needs, without the expectation that a "good" website must have ecommerce, or streaming video, or feature A, or B, or C.
