Bluring the line: is tap the new click?

As one half owner of a small business I know the value of every dollar. Before investing a single dollar we must ensure that each is maximized, ’cause there ain’t many of them! Website and e-marketing strategy development is not cheap because of the many hours invested. No matter what your CEO’s 15 year old third cousin trumpets as “web design!” As we bankroll our website I often wonder what percentage of our consumers ACTUALLY visit our website? We’re investing all this money for a technology that contributes nothing in-store, to that essential experience that makes us successful. Why wait for them to go to your site, why not bring the site to them, couldn’t the two experiences be blended. Why is there a chasm? How much more would we maximize our investment if EVERY in-store visitor utilized the website. Stop thinking of it as a “website” and rather as a service that enables us to achieve our objectives – intimately know our consumer, engage community, educate, communicate, enable an interactive brand, empower the community to promote and grow itself. The iPhone and the HP TouchSmart have blurred how we interact with websites, applications and technology. Maybe tap is the new click? Maybe our next website will be a service that our community fluidly interfaces with, your location or modality has no relevance.

What do you think?