Do you use your Website as a communication channel or display window?

Do you use your Website as a communication channel or display window?

I think, the majority of you who come by here will say: communication channel. As it is almost self-evident, everybody knows that Web is interactive and full of potential, it cannot just be a display window.

However, are you sure that you really use Web as a communication channel? Sometimes I think Web is too easy, too convenient, so it deceives people.

Have you been typing words diligently onto the screen, imaging yourselves talking to people on the other side of the screen, convincing yourselves that all the points will be well taken and understood, so as your clear, beautiful, well-designed and informative website?

If you have been feeling this way, you might have also treating Web as your display window without noticing it...

Web is such a convenient tool to communicate our thoughts and promote our products, therefore it is easy to forget that there are also others than us, who think and read and use the Web in a different ways.

As I told you before, I have a quite popular Chinese niche blog and I have been happy about its traffic, interaction, and quality readers. However, even in this aspect it keeps surprising me every now and then.

Recently I conduct a survey on my blog, asking readers to vote on the topics they would like to read more. To my surprise, so far the topic that got the highest votes, is the topic that I have never written about!

Is it because I have not written about it, so people vote about it?
Or is it just a hidden demand I never seriously considered, before I asked my readers?

Even among the topics I have often been written about, I never really understood why some articles became huge hit, some not. Popularities of my articles came always as surprising mysteries.

I am already a comparatively experienced blogger, still there are many things I don't know about my readers, and many things I would never know enough. Recently I am also surprised to find out that many people don't even think about their visitors at all. When they put out information on the Web, they just put it there and assume that people will find it and use it just as how they think.

They might claim that they do use Web as a marketing tool, a communication channel, a promotion method, however from the bottom of their heart the Web is just a display window that displays Their logic, Their thoughts, Their wishes, not the Visitors'.

They might be actively updating the latest news to the Website, without even knowing how many people ever visited that site.

They might be buying ads space from everywhere, without evaluating whether their site is optimised to hook the visitors stay longer, come back, or do what hey want the readers to do.

Many of them are very familiar with the Web techniques, are able to design beautiful pages to promote their products, even have web shops operating. They just don't really understand why they do it, never thought about how to evaluate it, just presuming that visitors will have exactly the same logic as they do. So, their Website can grow as beautifully and sophisticatedly as it could be, without knowing if anyone even drop by and use it.

I think we can never be too sure that we don't take website as a display window, no matter how experienced we think we are.

Do you use your Website as a display window or a communication channel?

This would be an important question to ask ourselves again and again.... as long as we are still communicating through the Internet.