Comments on: My God, the Internet is Really Big

by: Digi

Tue, 07 Aug 2007 17:41:36 +0000

Thanks for the reminder, Tom. Having quite a large geek streak, I often have to remind myself not to go into too much detail with clients about their web sites because it just confuses them. As you said, they don’t really want or need to know how/why it works, they just want to know that it does.

by: Danita

Tue, 07 Aug 2007 15:43:20 +0000

Tom, good article. You bring up a lot of great points. I never really connected how each of us perceive the web in our own individual personal ways. It makes working with and explaining to our own clients a challenge. A month ago I made a how-to booklet for a client (who absolutely knows nothing about the web) about how to work on their own CMS (Content Management System) site. I wrapped my brain around how to explain it simply enough and in terms that they would *get*. I used an analogy of a car to help explain how their CMS site works. I wrote that the outside of the car is what the public sees (website). Inside of the car are the controls that work the engine (Backend of site). You need a key to get into your car (password). And once you are inside the car you’ll see the dashboard that has controls to drive the car (the same goes with a CMS site’s Dashboard). When I explained it like that my clients immediately *got* it. No longer was their site a confusing mystery to them. Would this analogy work on other people, I don’t know. Maybe for the yarn lady it would have to be something more catered to her experience as you stated.

by: Tamar Wallace

Mon, 06 Aug 2007 16:34:51 +0000

Really? The World Wide Web and the Internet aren’t the same thing? Who knew?!? And thank you for pointing that out…It may just cause me to be a bit more patient with my clients when explaining web vs. print. And how’s this for another irony: while the World Wide Web IS vastly large, it makes the world seem a little smaller - you can communicate with people across the globe in a split second…you can find a classmate from grammar school…and you can make valuable, solid friendships with people you’ve never met face-to-face. It really is an amazing thing.
Great article, Tom!