Back in the late 90s, companies were putting up websites largely as a defensive measure …for no more compelling reason than “everyone else is”, so no one wanted to risk being left out. Most marketing folks believed that this new tool would be important “someday”, but few were sure exactly how. So sites remained rather skeletal and image-oriented, expectations stayed low, and the bulk of marketing budgets continued to flow into the traditional vehicles (print ads, direct snail-mail, events, etc.). The typical B2B was ecstatic if their site simply acted as a decent billboard… where a prospect might (for example) get the word to “Meet us at Gaviscon ’99”.
The Web Matures
In the early 2000s, some things went down that changed the landscape dramatically. [Read more...]
