Thirty years ago this week Tim Berners-Lee launched the first website and kicked off the World Wide Web. Today the web is ubiquitous and has had widespread impacts on the way we live, communicate, shop and work.
The internet, a structure created in the 1960s, allowed individuals to share documents and information between computers, but computers were all using different encoding languages to send and receive data. When Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web and universal protocols like HTML language, HTTP and URLs in 1991, online access to information became a public tool.
Since its creation, the World Wide Web has woven its way into all aspects of life.
In honor of this anniversary, we’re taking a look at the top five ways the World Wide Web has changed the world of business. In no particular order, these include:
Remote work
Given the circumstances of the past year and a half, remote work is a standout example of how the web has changed business practices.
Kathleen Stansberry, an Elon University professor who works with the campus’ Imagining the Internet Center, said, “Digital technology has changed business dramatically in that it removes many of the restrictions of time and space, where you don’t need to be in the same location to have a meeting or share information.”
“You don’t need to be in the same time zone (or) you don’t need to be in the same city in order to have to be able to communicate very quickly. So, the rise of a universal web has made it possible for companies, businesses, organizations, to truly become more global by removing restrictions in time and space for co-working,” she added.
According to Pew Research Center study, only 20 percent of Americans worked from home before the pandemic. During COVID-19, that statistic spiked to 71 percent and 54 percent of employees said they want to continue working from home after the pandemic.
Social media as a business tool
With the birth of the World Wide Web came the creation of social media giants like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Nearly 20 years since the creation of these sites, you would be hard-pressed to find a business that does not advertise on some form of social media.
“Every company has become a media company now in that every organization that has a webpage or social media presence, which it’s generally expected that you do, needs to consider themselves a media company because they are producing media,” Stansberry said.
Some small businesses also operate through an online-only model, exclusively using social media sites to advertise and sell their products.
E-commerce
While some companies rely on social media to advertise and sell their products, e-commerce as a whole has boomed. E-commerce giants like Amazon, Etsy, Shopify and more have boomed thanks to the creation of the World Wide Web.
Stansberry said even the small business you wouldn’t expect have embraced e-commerce.
“My husband is really big into fly fishing and I was kind of interested in it too, so he used to work with this little fly shop,” she explained. “They’ve also become an online business and they share their expertise through a blog and they sell and then they link to the products mentioned when they’re talking about what’s fishing really well on rivers.”
“Much of their profit now comes from their website,” she added.
From retail shops to restaurants to bookstores and beyond, businesses have embraced an e-commerce model, either exclusively or as a supplement to their brick-and-mortar presence.
Increased communication
Now that customers can interact with a business online, a new line of communication has opened between companies and their consumers on the World Wide Web.
Customers can leave reviews, ask other shoppers for recommendations, file complaints, ask questions, etc., all from the comfort of their home on the web. Sites like Google also allow users to quickly lookup a business address, hours and reviews to get the information they need quickly.
While use of the web has made it easier and faster to receive this type of information, Stansberry said it also has deeper impacts.
“It’s changed some of the power dynamics between corporations and customers because customers have many more avenues to respond to corporations or to communicate with one another and put pressure on organizations to change say their business practices or complain about a product,” she said. “So it’s really changed some of those power dynamics. I think it has put more power into the hands of customers.”
Stansberry also added that many companies create an online personality that customers can gravitate to, drawing in more communication, connection and interest.
Data usage and targeted marketing
As you browse, research or shop online, the ads you see start to become more specific to your interests. For example, if you search for a specific book on Google, you may see an ad for that same title on your Facebook feed the next day.
This data usage fueling targeted marketing has been a game-changer in the world of online business.
“If you do something like a television ad, it’s going to hit a wide audience and maybe you’ll reach the people that care about that particular idea or service or product, but there’s no guarantee,” Stansberry explained. “When you can organize people by their interests or by very specific criteria, and then micro-target them with advertising, it’s much more affordable than the broad-based approach.”
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Elizabeth Pattman is the trending topics reporter for the Times-News in Burlington, covering business, COVID-19 and all things trending. Contact Elizabeth (she/her) at epattman@gannett.com. I’m also available on social media @EPattmanTN on Twitter or @burlingtontimesnews on Instagram.
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