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According to Ofcom, the British telecoms regulator, there are now more than six million broadband connections in the UK. Many industry experts are hailing a new golden age in website design and functionality, but is this likely to become a reality?

Since the internet took off on a global scale in the 1990s, we’ve seen many gradual evolutions in website design. From the early days of essentially recreating a corporate brochure online to the sophisticated procurement and information channels of today, the speed of change in website design has been remarkable. The industry standard of design in recent years has been the successful BBC model, featuring large amounts of information on a home page, feeding through to more detailed category specific menus. This model is now so familiar to users that to depart from it too radically could be self-defeating. And more recently we’ve seen a trend back towards simplification in order to provide accessible content to the full spectrum of users which now make up target audiences. The London Business School is a great example of this. The school has gone for a visually led, text light design which speaks about the values of the school and conforms to Level 2 of the accessibility guidelines as directed by the Disability Discrimination Act

Arguably a more important change will be better functionality. Instead of the traditional seven page booking process for flights and hotels, this can be reduced to a single page process. As long as information is clearly presented, the result will be simpler and clearer for users. And there are broadband vehicles other than the browser, for example Google Earth, a desktop broadband focused application that really works. The corporate site should look at the use of improved desktop services taking the now familiar desktop News ticker that bit further.

Avoiding reliance on gimmicks such as the animated introductions that used to dominate every corporate website a few years ago will be important, as they separate users from the content services they want. At the forefront of the industry’s mind should be how to utilise technology to improve customer attraction, retention and loyalty – rather than creating new applications for applications sake. This means concentrating on helping customers navigate to what they're interested in more efficiently. The ability of broadband to be always “live” fosters greater usage and the ability to have dialogue simultaneously across more than one channel. This in turn will provide a more reassuring experience when shopping or banking online.

Moreover the buzz word of the moment – convergence – may well encourage short-term reservation.  Why invest significant sums in redesigning your website for broadband users when, within the foreseeable future, the whole way we intake information and access the internet is likely to change anyway? 

Instead of using broadband to radically overhaul sites, companies will look to enhance the user experience and fundamentally allow a site to do its job well. And for those involved in the development and design of both corporate and consumer facing websites it is also time to start thinking beyond broadband – the next few years promise to be as interesting and exciting as the past few have been.

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