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Interactivity: Here's the DealIn a recent one-month period, I visited three different computer shops. Just one provided a useful, rewarding experience. I left the other (nameless) two astonished by the raw and offhand techniques being used to sell expensive, sophisticated products. At one store, a salesman talked at me to the almost complete exclusion of the female friend whom I was accompanying, even once it was made very clear she was the one doing the buying; incredibly, he shook my hand but not hers when we left. And rather than asking exactly what you plan to use a computer for, salesmen proudly announce that their $3500 PC comes with 32 meg of RAM, as if no other machine on the face of the planet offered such an extraordinary feature. When you nod politely and leave quickly, the salesmen's faces take on a resigned look; most of their potential customers rush out like this, and they can't quite understand why. Compare this experience with those available on the Web. At Computer Shopper magazine's site you can enter your interests and have a computer specification recommended to you. And at Beyond Computers' site you can provide those specifications, choose from hundreds of components from scores of manufacturers, and have the site give you a price on the unique computer you want. Then you can order it on-line. (The giant Dell Computers apparently offers a similar service, but executes the idea so clumsily that I couldn't actually find the facility. Beyond Computers does it far better. Memo Dell: work on your site design, please.) Here's one retail segment, then, where the Web is actually outstripping the face-to-face experience. In computer retailing, you may well interact more thoroughly and satisfyingly with a Web site than with shiny-suited flesh-and-blood. For a long time, I've listened sceptically to talk of the importance of Web interactivity. Cautionary tales abound. I used to visit a site called Computer Magazine Review, run by computer journalist Joe Angel. While reviewing the magazines himself, Angel invited visitors to post their own thoughts. It seemed a natural idea, but hardly anyone contributed; eventually Angel pulled the site down. When I go to a site, I'm usually looking for straight information, from train timetables to Shakespearean quotations. Most of today's interactive sites still offer little more response than a bank's automatic teller machine. Besides, if you want interactivity, what's wrong with e-mail and basic forms? And technology forecasters have an embarrassing recent history of overrating the demand for interactivity; hundreds of millions were wasted on the abortive early-90s development of interactive TV before guinea-pig couch-potatoes (OK, a wildly mixed metaphor) made it clear in trials that they wanted no part of the idea. No sales staff, pleaseBut my experience at the Beyond Computers site - created by a small by technically savvy business - has helped me realise that interactivity will work when it matches your visitors' impulses. If someone visits a site looking for a recipe for that night's dinner, they probably won't want to linger to contribute recipes of their own: they want information, not interactivity. But sometimes they're visiting because they want to do something - such as buying. And sometimes they very definitely would rather not see any sales staff. As customers and businesses alike grow more used to Web exchanges, interactivity has a big future at any site which is selling something. Already, according to a CommerceNet/Neilsen Media Research survey, 15 per cent of US Internet users have made an on-line purchase; a Business Week survey found an even higher figure. And those figure should grow fast this financial year. In a report published earlier this year, US group Forrester Research takes this analysis a step further. It claims the Internet has reached its "second phase" where sites "will combine content, intelligence and communications to create a smart and compelling consumer experience". Forrester describes this as an era of "intelligent interactivity". Although Forrester aims its analysis at business sites, its ideas can be applied to non-business sites as well. Forrester argues good sites need many of the characteristics of a "compelling real-world experience". They should engage visitors, striking an emotional chord (like a good play or symphony, Forrester ambitiously suggests). They should stand out from the crowd, respond quickly and simply to requests, provide a full range of services, work in a trustworthy manner and - like any product - offer value. Forrester admits this sort of "intelligent interactivity" hasn't spread too far yet, with sites like Dell's still few and far between. "Today, most corporate Web sites are not much more than 'brochureware', with little to attract the attention of consumers on an ongoing basis", says the report. But it warns that "simply repurposing existing marketing materials and financial information is not going to cut it as the industry moves to the second stage of Internet development". Forrester's Interactivity RecipeWhat, according to Forrester, do you need to create intelligent interactions?
Any idiot can forecast Internet developments, and few people do it well. Much of today's Net hype will turns out to be as accurate as those interactive TV predictions. But better, richer interactivity really does look one of the best bets for the Web's future.
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"Rich content". A site should provide all the information which visitors need before making a decision. That requires accessible and elegantly economical design, with well-chosen use of audio and high-bandwidth graphics. It means offering "dynamic information" (Forrester cites the NASA site's use of real-time satellite data, but a more common source is likely to be the sort of product databases used on the Beyond Computers site). And it suggests sites should synthesize information available from other sources, and offer their own point of view (Forrester's example is the Yahoo! search engine).
