Internet World

I visited Internet World at Earls Court yesterday. I'm not madly keen on exhibitions, but I am keen to keep current and understand what's important to people. The things that I noticed were...

1) Everyone is peddalling the same stuff. The show is split up into areas, which means that as you move from stand to stand you get the same message repeated until you leave that area.

2) No-one has really worked out their unique selling point (USP). These are the people that have massive marketing budgets, but they are saying the same things that I believe about my company.

3) I learnt more about what's important to people by chatting to the person behind me in the queues that I did from most of the speakers. I got honest opinions and great feedback which is really valuable to me.

I was left with two thoughts:

 - there's people put there selling websites that start from £45k which have less functionality, are less useable and have less compelling design than the websites that I produce for £10k. Their overheads add no value to the website.

 - it took till about 9:00 in the evening to have the irony pointed out to me that I'd travelled up on the train to see the interent...