30 Years ago today, the legendary Sir Tim Berners-Lee submitted his now famous proposal for the creation of the World Wide Web. At that time Sir Tim was working for CERN and was seeking an easier, more convenient way for the scientists of the group to communicate and share information. His creation changed the future.
Described as “Vague but exciting.” by his supervisor, Sir Tim continued to work on his project and in 1991 the first ever website was launched. By 1992 there were 10 webservers live. By 2018 there were over 7 million web facing computers and 1 and a half billion websites. The way people and businesses communicate was revolutionized.
The creation of the World Wide Web has allowed business to evolve. One example of this is the growth of E-Commerce. The rise of eBay and subsequently of Amazon has made business to consumer trading efficient and convenient.
For b2b companies the change has been slower and in part more informational. Large corporations often use their websites for information distribution. While smaller service companies vie to provide the most convincing online message and easiest customer journey.
The competitive aspect of the web has grown exponentially as search engines have become more influential. Google search’s market share has grown so large that nearly 89% of search traffic is driven by Google. (Statista 2018) In the fight for top ranking spots hiring the right Web and User Experience (UX) designer has become much more important.
Web design itself has changed dramatically. The original website from Sir Tim featured plain HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) simple text and basic HTTP links. Soon after this inline images were introduced by Marc Andreessen who suggested the <img> html tag in 1993. Macromedia Flash took websites to a whole new (and ultimately futile) level in the 2000’s and finally the popularity of the content managment system took hold with Wordpress still dominating the market.
Our Digital Team have a long history of web design and have developed alongside the World Wide Web to meet and exceed our client’s expectations. The growth of mobile internet has helped to bring businesses into client and consumer pockets alike, but it has added challenges along the way.
Without the world wide web our services in social media management, marketing and web design wouldn’t exist. We’ve worked for 50 years in the print industry and, while the WWW was a disruptor to that industry our diversity of service and willingness to adapt has kept us on the go year after year.
Business is about service. The World Wide Web has given the world unparalleled opportunity to provide exceptional service to clients and customers globally almost instantaneously and that, is incredible.
