Subscribe to Optaros RSS feedModernista has launched a radical new website to visually demonstrate that your brand/company is now everywhere on the web and beyond your complete control. I applaud them for their radical approach at hammering home this key point.
The concept is pretty simple. They use Flickr, Facebook and Wikipedia as content containers for their work, company info, etc. and link people to those sites from their homepage. The most radical decision was to use a random generation of selected sites proxied on their url with a very small navigation overlay in the upper left corner. The design of this navigation could certainly be improved, its hard to read and so small it is easy to miss. But the concept is radical and the first I have seen to take the concept of a Web 2.0 corporate website to the logical conclusion.
A lot of our clients are uncomfortable with the idea of killing the corporate voice on the website and allowing individuals to express themselves through blogs. This now seems like a prudent middle ground between brochureware and the postmodern website. We will see if this is merely a publicity stunt (certainly successful) or a commitment to use this approach for the long term (questions to be answered).
Hopefully they will keep it up and share some results. I'd love to know the following:
- What is the bounce rate from the homepage? (some percentage will be completely confused)
- How does this impact their win-rates against competitors? (too scary for prospects or innovative?)
- What about leads? (No way to create any engagement on the site at all)
Let's see if anyone else has the guts to follow them