The E-Business Software Weekly is a series profiling trends and developments in software and applications that support e-business, the Internet, and other electronic communication channels. Look for a new story each week in this space.
Life Without the Internet
I had the opportunity, over the holiday season just passed, to travel back in time. Not literally, of course. But the practical effects were very much the same as if I had borrowed the magic DeLorean from "Back to the Future" and set the dial to, say, 1990. This time-traveling was occasioned by the several days that I spent on a remote family farm in Idaho at which Internet service was unavailable, and then by several more in a family member's house packed with, at times, more than a dozen people-and including only one telephone line. For the first time since I had made the same excursion three years before, I had the opportunity to experience life without the Internet. And what an interesting and illuminating experience it was.
I say this knowing that a great many other readers will have entertained similar circumstances in the past, perhaps even over the recent holiday. And, for some, the Internet's absence may have produced little detectable change, so marginal is the World Wide Web in their day-to-day activities. For other sojourners, for whom the Web is primarily a tool of the workplace, the lack of Internet access may have been a minor inconvenience, noticeable but hardly missed. But for a peripatetic consultant like myself whose work life as well as non-trivial aspects of his personal life rely heavily upon the Internet, my recent experience vividly highlighted how central the Internet had become in my day-to-day life and, most significantly, illuminated what I missed most when access was taken away for this nearly two-week period.
All-News Internet
More than anything, deprived of Internet access, I felt out of touch with the world. Now this might seem an odd thing to say in view of sociologists' fears that the Internet will become an instrument of social isolation, but at least for me, news sources on the Web have become my primary vehicle for learning-in real-time-what is going on in the world. I am certain, in this respect, that I am not alone. Recent surveys from A.C. Nielsen and others have ranked the Internet either second or third in importance as a source of news and information, right behind television and, in some cases, the daily newspaper.
Still, I was surprised-even though I generally read Internet news for less than half an hour each day-how dependent I had become on this one source of information for news about the world. Although the 24-hour coverage is a key benefit of Internet news sites, particularly for breaking news stories, I find such sites' convenience and interactivity to be even more important features. With the Internet, a user can log on to a news site, and within less than a minute have a fairly comprehensive view of the day's (or hour's) events-something that is impossible with the first-rate all-news cable networks like CNN or MSNBC or headline news outlets like CNN Headline News and Los Angeles' all-news radio station KNX.
Missing Out By Being Offline
The second most important loss I experienced by not being able to connect to the Internet was my inability to send and receive email. Again, this reaction surprised me-confirming again how dependent I had become on the Web and online services like AOL as a business and communication mechanism (although the loss was less urgent than it could have been, since most of my clients' offices were closed for the holidays). Among other things, I find email considerably more convenient than postal mail or even telephone communication: one can send a message immediately, does not have to find the other person in his office, and can automatically have written documentation of the interchange. As before, I do not think I am alone in this assessment; a variety of surveys now show that email is the most prevalent form of day-to-day business communication.
The third most important inconvenience I experienced without the Internet was the inability to quickly and easily look up information. In one case, I was preparing a business proposal, and wanted to research some of the subject's background. Unable to use the Internet, I proceeded based on assumptions that-when, days later, I was finally able to log on-proved not to be valid. As a result, I had to start over, having lost several hours of work, a problem that would have been avoided with the Internet's wide-ranging access to information. In another case, I wanted to research an electronics item that I was planning to give as a Christmas gift. Without access to the product reviews and shopping comparison engines that the Internet offers, I ultimately made a choice that, shall we say, turned out to be sub-optimal. Consequently, I will be returning the item to the store this week and exchanging it for the preferred model.
My loss of the Internet could have been more inconvenient than it was, however. Had I not been able to use the Internet in the weeks before Christmas, for instance, my holiday shopping would have been a lot more time-consuming-and expensive. A camera that I purchased cost only $199.00 on Amazon, compared to the $349.00 price in the specialty catalog from which I had originally planned to order it. I also would not have been able to track down a hard-to-find music CD that, although I ordered it by telephone, would have gone undiscovered were it not for the independent bookstore chain's online store-by-store inventory system. And, of course, there was eBay, which-as now has become common-was responsible for some of the most unusual and treasured of my family's gifts.
On the other hand, I was not at all distressed by temporarily losing some aspects of the Internet. For example, instant messaging. Although it is an exceedingly popular form of online communication, particularly among young people and a certain contingent of my business colleagues, I find it very annoying. Unlike email, which conveniently awaits for the recipient to respond, instant messaging-the email equivalent of Internet pop-up ads-instantly commands attention, interrupting one's workflow. And I didn't miss the Internet's entertainment or music offerings, even though I had limited access to television and radio while I was away. Although there are some excellent Web sites in these categories, the experience of Web entertainment and music still falls far short of the quality ad multiplicity of offerings available in the offline world. (Although, I must admit, I am intrigued by digital music players like the new iPod that allow one to download custom-selected songs from the Internet into a portable music player-a perfect blend of the online and offline domains. Soon, I suspect, movies and even television shows may be offered in similar fashion.)
Refocusing on What's Most Important
I recount the experiences described above because they drove home to me, in a way that any number of theoretical discussions had not, how central to my life certain aspects of the Internet have become to me-and, I must presume, to millions of other people. To distill the story to its essentials, the primary benefits of the Internet that I felt wanting in its absence were: immediacy, information, and convenience. Specifically, the immediacy of news, access to almost limitless information (including product and pricing information), and the convenience of easy communication, self-selected news reports, and real-time interactivity.
Now, none of this is particularly earth-shaking, but on a World Wide Web that is increasingly dominated by sales-oriented e-commerce sites, advertising pop-ups, entertainment concepts-of-the-day, and glitzy, Flash-based graphics, I believe these findings do suggest that some Web site owners may be focusing too much on the wrong things. For instance:
1. Site glamour rather than ease of navigation. A great many Web sites are designed as if the Internet were television. It isn't. While Web sites certainly should be professionally put together and pleasing to the eye, the rich-media accoutrements that appear on so many Web sites are more appropriate for a broadcast medium than they are an information directory. For instance, few people would sit still for a 15-second animated title page in an encyclopedia or dictionary (if such a thing were possible) that waylaid their progress toward the information they were seeking; why should Internet users be any more tolerant of 15- to 30-second "brand building" animations when they are searching for automobile ratings or home prices? This adjuration against online time-takers doesn't mean that Web sites should be all text and numbers, as they were in the Internet's first generation. Marketing sites like Mercedes USA, for one, do an excellent job of using evocative images to sell their product. But such images are deployed with a specific sales or marketing purpose in mind that enhances, rather than detracts from, the site's main purpose. In the same way, more Web site owners should ensure that their sites use time-delaying graphics and images with specific strategic purposes in mind, and otherwise build their sites to maximize information flow, ease of use, and convenience.
2. Commerce rather than product information. Some Internet-only businesses, like Amazon, could not survive in the absence of online sales. In fact, the "click and buy" potential of the Internet is so powerful that, by the late 1990s, many Internet analysts and companies alike had grown to see nothing else. But it is an unfair omission. Television ads, magazine ads, TV-based shopping networks, paper catalogs, and other direct mail pieces generate zero "click and buy" responses, yet are uniformly lauded as effective marketing tools. Maybe it's time to reassess the Internet's commercial role as well. Yes, the Internet can enable companies to generate a lot of immediate sales, but it can also be used to provide the kind of product information that can lead to purchases offline, either in retail stores or via the telephone. Although most retail sites do offer store or dealer locators (for companies with physical stores), other, less-common convenience-enhancing features would be even more helpful-and probably lead to even more sales, particularly in the offline world. My vote for the most urgently needed innovation: sophisticated product locators that point Web site users to the stores in their area that have a particular product in stock, saving shoppers the time and inconvenience of telephoning or traveling to the individual stores for the product they want.
3. Entertainment rather than information. Although the Internet opened up enormous entertainment possibilities, most have never panned out. Some ventures fizzled at the outset. Others, like Web-based game-playing and short films, have flourished, but appeal mostly to niche audiences. And even some of the most broad-based entertainment offerings, like MP3 music, have required integration with offline devices like MP3 players in order to become truly useful. On a more general level, it is the simply designed sites like Amazon, eBay, Yahoo!, and Google-rather than their more glitzy counterparts-that have been most commercially successful: the greatest information resource and communications tool ever invented. Perhaps Web sites would be designed more efficiently and navigate more easily if their owners focused more on making it as easy and convenient as possible to locate information rather than focusing so heavily on online sales, entertainment, or user engagement.
Just a thought. Of course, Web site owners also need to make money with their Web ventures-a requirement that sometimes seems to conflict with the prescriptions outlined above. How to resolve these contradictions? Stay tuned for a forthcoming column.
In the mean time, I will bring my personal reflections to a close, and invite readers, wondering how they can make the Internet and e-business work best for them, to pursue the same, unexpectedly enlightening course that I just did: take a vacation and learn, first-hand, what (if anything) you miss most in a world without the Internet.
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