Working in the digital sphere and working with / pushing the boundaries of web technologies, one thing we often forget is that there are limits to what people can do on your website, for many particular types of sites. For these types of sites, you can’t expect your site to replace all other touchpoints with your users, but merely complement and enhance them. My wife, flicking through her IKEA catalogue mentioned “now I can see things more clearly”. What she meant was although the website’s great at helping her find products (good site navigational / organisational / labelling systems are in place) and inspire her by presenting different room styles, her experience then needs to go to the next stage further with offline interactions with the company.

To see products in more detail users will need to go in-store or at least pick up a catalogue. Catalogues are a different type of beast to websites. Websites are limited by a certain screen size / real estate and location-based restrictions whereas a catalogue, designed well, can be a leisurely browse over a cup of tea, or on a train-journey. And as more and more of what we do is online, from work to home-management, then I find that there’s more and more that I want to do offline. This particularly includes reading of articles or sanity checking my own work.

It’s so much harder to concentrate on something when staring at a screen. When it’s printed out, you can conveniently read it where you like, at your own pace, hold it at a comfortable height, you can mark it up and you can write all over it. These tasks are still, to some extent, not being adequately replaced by computers – though they may try. The more and more we do online, the more enjoyable things we do offline have become, and companies have to remember not to neglect this space but to take advantage of it and continue the experience through.

Particularly true to shopping for furniture and cars, to name but two.