I’m an Interactive Art Director by day (… and by night too I guess, since I freelance in the night time). What that means (at least right now) is that most people spend a lot of time asking me about web sites. Microsites, (Macro?) sites, blogs, yada yada yada. More and more I’m amazed when I ask people (CEOs, VPs, Marketing Managers, other designers, the list goes on) the very simple question, “What is the point of your/our web site?” and they don’t have a clear answer. More often than not the answer is somewhere between lead generation and “I don’t know.” My follow up is this, “Why do you expect people to come to your/our site then?” The last time I checked I didn’t ever have a blast being a lead for some company to sell to me later. (Maybe it’s just me)

My point is this. The days of “We have to have a website so we can be on the web!” are long gone. Your online product brochure is going to draw fives of visitors a day if that’s you’re answer. The web is too vast now. There are over a billion people on the web today globally, but to get a piece of that huge audience you have to engage them. They’re not looking for you unless you’re already big, and then they aren’t sticking around if you don’t offer them something for their time beyond product specs and a chance to get your junk email.

The internet is the new TV or Radio. Way back in the day some genius ad man decided the best way to sell his client’s soap on this new broadcast-thing (it was radio at the time) was to give the customers a show his ads could appear in and around. Thus the soap opera was born and also the model for most radio and TV as we know it today.

So what’s your Soap Opera 2.0? What’s you’re answer to the simple question “What is the point of your website?”