Overview of the Article Series: Why Your Website Is More Than Just a “Digital Business Card”
Having your own website up and running is a given for most companies and has long since ceased to be anything new. However, the importance attributed to a website varies greatly. It is often understood as a “digital business card” which, once created, no longer requires much attention. This strongly suggests that the various possibilities and potentials of having your own website are not fully recognized.
In the digital age—especially for service providers—the website plays a particularly important role. In this article series, we will help you recognize the potential of a targeted, user-friendly, and brand-consistent website for your company and its brand.
- In the first part, we shed light on the often underestimated importance of a professional website and place it within the frequently misunderstood context of digital transformation. You will also learn the difference between digitization and digital transformation.
- The second part helps you understand why your website is much more than just a “digital business card” and what real potential a professional website offers for business and brand.
- In the third part, we explore possible reasons why websites are still often underestimated. We also present ten ideas on how you can use your website profitably.
To recognize the far-reaching potential of websites, we must first examine the context in which companies operate and interact today. The failure to recognize these potentials and the widespread misconceptions about the importance of websites in purchasing behavior stem from external dynamics and changes that individuals and organizations have not yet fully understood.
How Websites Have Changed Since Their Creation
Digitization has been discussed for three decades, and websites have not just emerged recently either. The first website was created on August 6, 1991, by Tim Berners-Lee, a British computer scientist.
Since their inception, the possibilities for designing and using websites have steadily evolved and improved. In the beginning, websites were very simple and consisted mainly of text and images.
The “digital business card” was born—and at the time, it was a genuine innovation. Through the internet, people were suddenly able to access information from anywhere in the world that had previously been completely inaccessible to them.
In the late 1990s, a new generation of web technologies and applications emerged, enabling users to share content themselves, communicate, and promote interactivity and user participation online. These included web blogs, social media platforms, and other applications that dramatically increased networking and interaction possibilities. Web 2.0 was born.
Since then, a great deal has happened:
- A large portion of the world’s population has internet access.
- A large portion of the world’s population owns a portable device.
- Approximately 1.83 billion websites exist worldwide (as of 2022).
- There are countless alternatives for independently creating and publishing an (unprofessional) website.
- The possibilities for interactive website design are endless.
- The business applications of websites have become significantly more diverse.
- The importance of brands continues to grow.
- Innovation pressure continues to increase alongside rising cost pressure.
Today, websites are far more complex in design and offer a wide range of functions and possibilities that were unimaginable at the dawn of the internet. Thanks to the integration of various technologies and programming languages such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, websites can now include animated graphics, interactive elements, and other complex features.
Nowadays, the majority of modern software is based on web technologies. The world’s largest companies could not operate their business models without globally accessible websites. This alone demonstrates how central websites are within business models and the enormous potential they hold.
Website usage has also changed. In the past, websites were primarily intended for reading and disseminating information. Today, they are used for shopping, communication, and many other purposes. Websites are an integral part of our daily lives and help us navigate them. The technological innovations of recent decades have created human activities and habits that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.
Most people have been using a variety of digital offerings for years, are customers or consumers of various platforms, and communicate through digital channels. Organizations, however, face major challenges in dealing with the increasingly digital reality within a dynamic and complex environment. In many cases, this is because the dynamics are misjudged and important changes—as well as their interdependencies and consequences—are not recognized.
What Is It Really About: Superficial Digitization or Deep Transformation?
While the majority of people have largely adapted to these developments, organizations often find it much more difficult to change in line with external conditions—or even to recognize the need for such change.
As a result, the potential of websites is still significantly underestimated by many companies and their owners. The question of a website’s relevance is answered in the wrong context when past customer needs and technological possibilities serve as the mental foundation.
As a business owner, you should ask yourself which opportunities for building an independent and profitable business over the next 3–5 years need to be considered. Otherwise, technologies—including websites—are viewed in isolation instead of being recognized as integral components of the business and operating model.
And yet it should be clear by now: in today’s economic world, no company can survive without digital structures and corresponding competencies.
What still seems unclear to many is the magnitude of the opportunities and risks that external changes bring for organizations. Often, digitization and digital transformation are lumped together and primarily associated with process and technology aspects aimed at efficiency gains. The focus is usually on system optimization.
In reality, digital transformation is a societal development that can be understood as a response to increasing complexity and dynamism. Only when we recognize where optimizing the existing system is no longer sufficient—and where overcoming the system itself becomes necessary—can we identify true innovation potential.
“If you digitize a crappy process, you get a crappy digital process.” – Thorsten Dirks
Due to a lack of insight, the motto of digitization for many companies is: What already exists in the analog world is simply transferred into digital form—and that’s it. This not only creates compatibility problems but also distorts the view of relevant developments and valuable business potential.
Only through a fundamental examination of the significance of websites will new opportunities for the enterprise reveal themselves. The relevance you assign to your own website becomes clear in light of corporate goals, customer needs, and brand identity. Then it becomes evident what purpose the website should fulfill, which customer segments and needs must be considered, and how the content can express the brand identity.
For companies, it is increasingly insufficient to merely digitize existing processes in order to make them more efficient. Instead, it is necessary to consider:
- whether the things we do are still truly effective,
- how digital technologies can help us increase effectiveness—and thus the economic viability—of value creation, and
- what impact these efforts have on joint value creation.
The far-reaching effects of digitizing our living and working environments are often completely overlooked in digitization efforts. And this despite the fact that no organization can escape the transformation driven by digitization, networking, and knowledge intensification. And despite the fact that most of us have already had to change numerous times since the beginning of digitization in order to remain viable and connected.
The concept of digital transformation takes these developments into account and describes the transition from an industrial society to an information and knowledge society as a profound change at normative, collective, and individual levels. It is a technology-supported transformation process in which increasing information density forces societies, people, and organizations to change. The holistic digitization of all areas of life is therefore the main driver of change and is often referred to as the fourth industrial revolution.
To harness these inward- and outward-facing potentials and mitigate possible risks, organizations must look beyond technocratic aspects and, above all, address structural issues. Because: The structural design of an organization determines thinking and behavior—and thus collaboration—in the context of digitization.
Only when the deeper layers and interrelationships of people and organizations are reconsidered can the “Big Shift” succeed collectively.
System structure drives system behaviour.
Against this backdrop, companies should reflect on some fundamental questions whose answers may determine future business success and organizational health:
- How do we design the organization (→ communication) to enable “digital thinking and acting” for all stakeholders in an era shaped by digital technology?
- Which structures prevent joint value creation using digital possibilities?
- How do we communicate and interact with our customers to gain their attention and better meet their changing needs (today and in the future)?
When it comes to websites, many still fall into the misconception that it is merely about digitally replicating what already exists. The so-called “digital business card” reflects this misjudgment.
However, if one engages more deeply with digitization and recognizes the resulting necessity for transformation, the focus gradually shifts from efficiency (“How can we optimize what already exists?”) to effectiveness (“What truly moves us forward?”).
Which leads us to the question:
