Rumblecloud

The Right Mix.

A personal theory on successful websites. A good primer for beginners.

Foreword:

Back in mid-1980's when I started working in the area of interactive marketing, there really was no World Wide Web and there were only a couple of viable networks on which an advertiser could participate. At that time, we knew the WWW was coming, but no one foresaw the speed at which it would arrive. So the work we were doing was more or less research, and the networks we played on were used as a learning tool for our clients, one a well-known automotive manufacturer. And learn we did.

We learned about people's patience, site architecture and page design. We learned that information wants to be free, that people would gladly fill out a survey if you gave them something of value in return. All this pioneering work we produced for our clients and served on networks like Prodigy, CompuServe and Genie, indeed taught us a great deal. And even though the technology has changed and the WWW has grown to over a ka-billion pages, a lot of what we learned is still valid. For instance, we found that to have a successful online venture, a site needs a mixture of four basic ingredients: