Bill Fletcher is hunting for lazy websites!”   – I recently posted this statement on my Facebook profile.   The response was immediate.

“What the heck is a lazy website?”

I falsely assumed everyone would know exactly what I meant, forgetting that not everyone has  spent the last two years studying web development and design.  I thought for a minute about how to explain what a lazy website is in just a few words on Facebook.  I came up with this:  “A lazy website is one that costs you a little money rather than making you a lot of money.”

Ultimately, I could not do justice to a subject as diverse as next generation website design in a Facebook word bite.  To appreciate the next generation in web site capability you really have to look at what led to the sites most of us have currently.

The Internet was developed out of a need to facilitate the sharing of vast amounts of information among groups of researchers located in various locations.  Once the general public got a hold of it, we tried our best to turn this revolutionary life changing information engine into a colossal swap meet.  The rise and fall of this effort led to the infamous dot.com bubble we witnessed in the early part of this decade.

During the years since the bubble burst, several things happened:

1. Most of the “BuyMyTrinkets.com” operations have withered leaving only those with an actual viable e-commerce business plan.
2. Most businesses have gone ahead and put up a website anyway.
3. A vast majority of people now use the Internet regularly and can not imagine going back to life without it.

Even thought we business owners had witnessed firsthand the burst of the dot.com bubble, most of us knew we needed to have a website nonetheless.  We just weren’t sure what it was supposed to do.  We felt certain the first thing a prospective customer would do is check out our website to make sure we are legit.   To have no website was to risk failing that first test our prospects would put us too.  I still believe this may actually be true.

To avoid failing the test, most of us sought out the most economical way we could find to put up a site that would say “See, we are here!”  Most of us simply put up what amounted to an electronic brochure created with a “one size fits all” template though one of the numerous companies that offered “Instant websites, cheap!”  Before long we all had our very own “lazy websites.”

Remember that the Internet was developed as an information engine.  Now think about a typical brochure.  Would you ever really consider a static brochure to be an engine of any kind?  Not so much.

I believe that over the next five years, maybe less, we will see the static brochure type site replaced by a powerful business engine based site.  Let me try to give you a taste of what I mean.

One of the key components to any business transaction is information.  Access to the right information can make it much easier for a buyer to buy and it can also make it easier for a seller to sell.  It just happens that accessing information is what the Internet was really built to do.  Ask yourself this.  If you are shopping for a refrigerator, would you rather have access to a brochure, or a Google search engine?

Now let’s say you are selling refrigerators.  Would it be more helpful for you to know that a prospective customer picked up your brochure, or would you rather receive detailed statistics that show you what brands your customers searched for, what models they studied, how long they spent looking at each model?  Would it be hard to make a website give you this data?  Nope, it would not be hard at all.  Would it cost a lot to do?  Nope, it would probably make you more money than it cost.

So, we can say that if you are selling refrigerators and your website is simply a brochure, you have a lazy website, and a missed opportunity.

The same idea applies to service businesses as well.  Let’s say you want to remodel a guest bath in a Cottage style.  Which would you find more useful, a site that has pictures of a few different examples all  done in variations of  faux Tuscan style, or would you rather find a site that offers a searchable database of  images of Cottage style elements to help you design your look.  What if you could save a collection of your favorites right on the site so you could easily show them to your spouse later on?

On the other side of the coin, what if you happen to be a contractor who specializes in remodeling guest baths and Cottage style is one of your absolute favorite styles to design.  Would it be helpful if the customers described above are surfing your website and your site could tell you which elements they are saving in their collection?  What if your site could build and transmit the order forms when it comes time to obtain the items from the various manufacturers?  How about if your site were to automatically shoot an email to your customer to keep them posted on the new delivery date for the one of a kind vintage claw foot double slipper tub on order. Would this be hard for a business engine to do? Nope. Would it cost a lot to implement?  Nope, it would probably end up making you money.

The purpose of the Google search engine is to bring back the most useful and “information rich” sites it can find for any particular keyword you might enter.  The engineers at Google and all the other search engine providers are working overtime to refine their search algorithms in order to locate and return the information engine type sites we have been talking about.  Information is what it is all about at Google.

So going back to the beginning, the definition of a lazy website is any site that costs the owner to build and maintain rather than pulling it own weight and paying for itself.  When I am hunting for lazy websites it is only to show their owners what is possible with a next generation “business engine” site that can earn its keep.

We have just scratched to surface in the discussion about the capabilities of the next generation web site.  I plan to re-dedicate this blog to continue this discussion over the coming weeks and months.  I welcome your ideas.  If you have come across a website that you feel is a good example of what the possibilities are, please post links in a comment below.  I would like to check them out.  Thanks in advance for your contributions.

Bill Fletcher

Account Manager – White Ink Studio

(949) 813 3861