A business’ success often depends on how good its web design is, as an easy-to-use, informative and attention-grabbing website can make the difference between attracting customers’ interest and putting them off.
As websites not only provide information to potential customers or clients these days, but also offer an e-commerce facility, appointment booking options, links to send emails, and access to external sources, it is a huge resource for most companies.
However, 30 years ago firms did not even have websites, let alone rely on them for their entire business functionality. Indeed, it was only in March 1989 that the inventor of the World Wide Web introduced his concept, changing the face of communication, advertising, shopping, and information-gathering forever.
British computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee was the man responsible for the web, setting out his vision for an information management system 30 years ago this month.
After receiving encouragement from his boss, he went on to develop the Hypertext Transfer Protocol, most commonly recognised as HTTP, as well as Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). These enabled content to be added on to the internet, and as they were released royalty-free, they opened up a huge arena for change among any industry anywhere in the world.
Speaking with the Daily Swig, internet pioneer Vint Cerf said: “I think the internet’s evolution might have been substantially slower were it not for the World Wide Web, and the avalanche of content that it brought, to say nothing of a graphical interface to the internet in the form of the Mosaic initially.”
NCSA Mosaic was the web browser that really launched the web, helping it become a tool the public could benefit from.
Last year marked Mosaic’s 25th anniversary, with its first beta for Unix operating systems running X Windows released on January 23rd 1993.
While it was not the first web browser, it became the most commonly used, as it was so easy to operate, included pictures, and made icons and bookmarks popular.
An article in ZDNet said: “Mosaic changed everything. Because Mosaic was fast and enabled people to see images within pages, it quickly gained fans.”
Despite Mosaic losing a lot of its users within five years, it set the scene for other web browsers, encouraging more and more people to take advantage of the resource facility that was the internet and access the abundance of content the web can provide.
“Today, we live our lives on the web, and we all owe a debt of gratitude to Mosaic,” ZDNet stated, adding: “We’re still living in the world Mosaic pioneered.”
While the majority of the world cannot imagine life without the internet these days, Mr Berners-Lee said the web is not being used as a “force for good” any longer, CNBC reported.
In a letter to celebrate the important 30th anniversary of the World Wide Web, he stated: “The fight for the web is one of the most important causes of our time.”
To make sure your webpage is targeting your market in the best way possible and making the most of the internet’s unlimited reach, get in touch with web designers in Buckinghamshire today.