/Big Question/ Myth world
29/04/2009 | Filed under Discover > Big Question
What, in your opinion, is the biggest myth on the web?
Interactive expert
Justin Cookie
Fortune Cookie
The idea of brands and businesses being able to control their message online is a myth. The web is the ultimate in transparency. Word of mouth is global. Your brand, company, product quality and service levels are stripped naked for all to see. There is no longer anywhere to run, never mind hide.
Contracting to survive a recession is a myth. Daffy Duck coined the phrase ‘thurvival’ in his 1951 cartoon “Rabbit Fire’ and to survive AND thrive we need to innovate, invest and evolve. Users will become ever more loyal and attracted to experiences that are engaging, relevant, entertaining, and that allow them to accomplish their goals without frustration. Delay improvements to the web channel at your peril because you competitors are not.
Justin Cooke is managing director of Fortune Cookie
Business specialist
Dickie Armour
Fibranet Services Ltd
The biggest myth online is that individuals and companies think they own their domain names, but in a great many cases they won’t be listed as the Registrant and this can cause a whole hat full of trouble. Your domain name is the lifeblood of your online business and it’s vital that you keep control of it.
The legal entity of a domain name is known as the ‘Registrant’. A Registrant holds the right to use that domain name for a specified period of time (two years for a domain name ending in .uk). But it’s very common for the Registrant of a domain name to be a company employee, a website designer or an internet service provider and this can create problems should you want to move your domain name or website to another provider.
Check to see if the Registrant of your domain name is correct by doing a WHOIS lookup via http://www.whois.net. If the Registrant is not a name you recognise then contact your service provider or the person who registered your domain name for you and seek their help. You can also check out the .net magazine forums online where you can get good advice or drop me an email at dickie@fibranet-services.co.uk and I’ll see if I can help.
Dickie Armour is general manager of Fibranet Services
Activist
Oxblood Ruffin
Hactivismo
The biggest myth online is that the “government” knows what its doing. The government – whether they’re national, provincial, or local – are the last people who are in control. Governments are responsive. In spite of what any politician wants to say about being in “a leadership position”, governments are followers. They’re bridesmaids. Actually, less than bridesmaids. Political people are the hired children who through flowers and look pretty in the photograph and aspire to take credit for everything. Sad, really.
Oxblood Ruffin is the founder of Hacktivismo
Internet playboy
Drew Curtis
Fark
“The wisdom of crowds”. Crowds are hungry, stupid, ignorant and drunk
Drew is the owner of Fark.com
Interactive media
Paul Dawson
Conchango
That Twitter has a business model? That Amazon is a world-class user experience. It’s not the best, it’s simply the one everyone knows.”
Paul heads the user experience, design, branding and digital strategy team at Conchango
Hosting specialist
Neil Barton
Hostway, UK
From our point of view, one of the things that people take for granted is their hosting. While they understand that it is important, many organisations do forget that a hosting platform for a small business is different to that for an enterprise. Many organisations simply don’t take the time to understand the basics of bandwidth and capacity planning, let alone talk about virtualisation and content delivery networks. Websites aimed at attracting high traffic but hosted on a consumer platform will almost certainly fall over faster than you can say “load balancing”.
That said, hosting certainly isn’t the final word in the matter. Most companies will spend a great deal of money generating novel content for their websites and putting up all the latest bells and whistles – but they can forget about usability. Web designers need to pay attention to how users interact with the site; in particular, when they leave. This is absolutely imperative to staying agile and retaining customers.
Physical stores use promotions and catchy slogans to get the attention of their customers, and punters will leave both online and offline stores if they cannot find what they are looking for, so organisations should be thinking very carefully about the usability of their site
Secondly, the programming “behind the scenes” needs to be carefully coded to ensure that the page is stable and loads quickly. Moreover, the hosting platform should be suitable for the programming and intricacies of the application to make sure that there are no problems when it goes live. Ultimately, design and hosting arrangements should go hand in hand and complement each other – one cannot make up for the deficiencies of the other.
Neil is the director of Hostway UK
Payment expert
Jon Prideaux
SecureTrading
The biggest myth online is the notion that having a credit card means you are over 18. Previously, retailers could legitimately suggest that reliance on the person holding a valid credit card was proof enough that they were of adult age, but the launch by various financial services companies of pre-paid credit and debit cards to underage teens has changed this.
The customer holding a credit card is no longer a credible age verifier, and as a result, young people are increasingly using the anonymity of the web to buy all types of products suitable only for adults. Retailers must seize the initiative and adopt appropriate verification measures to ensure every person making an online purchase of goods and services is of the required age.
The technology now exists that will, amongst other search criteria, successfully check the age of a customer in almost every instant. SecureTrading’s identity and age verification solution allows merchants to cross reference buyer information using an array of databases to ensure customer information such as age, identity and address are correct.
Jon Prideaux is deputy CEO of SecureTrading
Ecommerce expert
Ben Dyer
Actinic
The biggest online myth is also a huge ticking time bomb: data ownership. Even today there is a naive assumption that we own our online data. If you’re using web applications, especially in a SaaS (Software as a Service) environment you really might want to read the small print. Even if you’re paying for online services you may still have little protection.
Without sounding alarmist, often you are signing your rights away without realising it. The classic example is the recent Facebook Terms of Use debacle. The original alterations granted Facebook an irrevocable worldwide licence to use your data as it saw fit. Facebook’s reaction was immediate and excellent, but faced with the potential wrath of 175million active users it didn’t really have a choice.
The second point is about access to your data. People rarely discover how integrated their content is to a particular service until they need to retrieve it. This is especially relevant in today’s economy; tech companies are falling off cliffs at an alarming rate, often with little or no warning. If your SaaS-based provider suddenly vanished, what can you say to the tax authorities if you can’t answer their questions?
We are using online applications for almost every walk of life, from social networks to the most intricate of business operations. If your life or business revolves around them, that small print may be important.
Ben Dyer is director of product development at Actinic
Hosting expert
Steve Holford
Fasthosts
A very common myth is that “high traffic volumes equals a successful website”. This is not always the case. It’s important to ensure that the right traffic is coming to your website. Your website should have a purpose, a target market of customers to attract – if your advertisements or SEO is not generating the visitors, they will very likely leave straight away. Such traffic is no good to you and could be costing you a lot of money.
Steve Holford is chief marketing officer at Fasthosts
PART TWO
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Comments
alex / 29/04/2009 / 15:03
The biggest myth is the idea that some people unselfishly help others out of altruism. They are not so selfless.
Tom Faull / 13/05/2009 / 18:44 / http://www.pureglowmedia.com
The biggest recent myth is that meta-tags aren't important any more. They are!
