In the good ol’ days of the web when there were more dreamers than businessmen working online it was common to think that all you needed was a computer, a modem and a website and the millions and million and millions of people who are online would form a credit-card waving crowd storming our website, eager to swell your bank account with their offerings. In the cold, harsh light of the 21st century online market place this sounds so lame that you begin to suspect that those who were online back then may have been taking something stronger than caffeine to stay awake.
Most of the clients we deal with today, even those who are lucky enough to have a team in place which handles some of the volume associated with answering emails, refreshing a website, checking competitors, responding to opportunities and doing all the work associated with running a website these days.
The website owner usually wears more than one hat, playing the role of the manager/player as they answer emails and get into work before they are even dressed, showered and had breakfast. The tale is familiar right across the world and we encounter it with business based as far apart as Australia, the UK, Greece, Spain, France, the US and Malaysia, which is why I am now busy penning this.
Hard work is certainly one of the requisite ingredients for success but so is smart work and this is where the web really comes into its own. Any of us is capable of working hard when it comes to our own success, but there are physical limits to what can be done and because the web and technology has made it possible to do more than was ever thought possible the limits we are running up against are not those of ability but rather those of endurance.
You can, for example, answer all your own emails, run a multi-product site using a Content Management System and, provided you have organised things right, run a large company, now from anywhere in the world. This is a state of affairs, however, which leaves little time for doing all the other business-related things you must do. Working so intensively in your business allows very little time for working on your business and usually this is the point at which things begin to become unravelled.
The web is changing fast. Trends, opportunities, chances and strange alliances come and go faster than we would have ever thought possible and the working smarter part requires the ability to:
You can, for example, answer all your own emails, run a multi-product site using a Content Management System and, provided you have organised things right, run a large company, now from anywhere in the world. This is a state of affairs, however, which leaves little time for doing all the other business-related things you must do. Working so intensively in your business allows very little time for working on your business and usually this is the point at which things begin to become unravelled.
The web is changing fast. Trends, opportunities, chances and strange alliances come and go faster than we would have ever thought possible and the working smarter part requires the ability to:
- Analyse trends
- Extrapolate from current markets
- Analyse the state of the home market
- Understand strengths and weaknesses in current business practices
- Take advantage of opportunities is emerging markets and home markets
Our strength comes from unrivalled exposure to many different business models, many different markets and many different products in many countries. Our ability to help you comes from the capacity of our analysts to define what works and what doesn’t and, most important for you at times, to spot what will work ahead of your competitors.
The web today is the great equaliser. It enables you to work from wherever you want provided you understand the dynamics that drives your business and what it takes to win and therein lies the paradigm shift that was missing in the early, wild years of its development.
The Web Direct Studio company Blog is penned by a number of our in-house staff from our different ones of activity. They write anonymously in order to free their range of expression, particularly when it comes to criticiing their sector of activity or making observations about their job. They work under a simple edict: What you say must make sense and must fit in with the tone of our online business. Apart from that they are the ones who choose the topic they write about in each Blog post.
