Will Websites Be Relevant In The Future?

Do you think websites will be relevant in the future? With the fast paced trends, technology and AI, it could go obsolete. Let's dive into this podcast, as I explained to you, where things are moving.

Hey there, Sidh here. Welcome to yet another episode of the Freedom Business podcast. And if you're not subscribed to this on Apple or Spotify, make sure you do that. We recently got in the top 10 trending podcasts on Apple and we are super happy about that. So in case you're not yet subscribed, please, please make sure that you subscribe and get the future episodes. So let's talk about will websites be relevant in the future? I'm recording this podcast in the year 2023, probably. If you're listening to it later on, maybe we are going to be living in that world. Whatever I'm going to be talking about in this particular podcast, so take a lot of notes and first part I'm going to talk to you about what are the different kinds of websites that there are in today's day and age. In the second part, I'm going to be getting into the future of the five or six different things that where I see it can impact in the whole space of websites. And of course the third part, I'm going to give you a few steps on how you can get started right now. Like what are the key points that you need to keep in mind right now so that you can build yourself up towards being relevant in the future as things are changing super fast? Okay. Just to give you like a background, I've been playing around with WordPress since the year 2000.

Okay. So I've had a lot of experience on websites. I've built hundreds of websites myself. I've spent loads of hours building landing pages on every single page builder software that you can never think of for over a decade and run campaigns for many of the world's top leaders and top influencers in the game. So the reason I'm sharing this with you is because I've been a follower of technology and an adopter of technology for many, many, many years and been a huge fan of WordPress for many years. And I've seen also WordPress going through its ups and downs and with new technologies coming in right now, like Doric, we have many of, you know, webflow, we've got many other platforms that are, you know, replacing the older formats that are there. Definitely WordPress powers up more than I think 50 or 60% of the world's websites right now. I do not know the exact Statistic, but it is a big chunk market share that is there. But now having said that, let's understand what other different types of websites. Okay, Number one is you have a content based website or a blog based website. And even I started off my journey based on this. I used to be running a spiritual blog where I used to be listening to all of the lectures of my spiritual master. I would take some of the best portions from his lecture, the quotes, and I would launch them as a blog, maybe a 200 word blog article. Take the excerpt from his particular lecture and put that. And that went on for a long time. And this was back in the year 2006, 2007, 2008, I think three to four years I ran that blog. That was the first time I got into this concept of blogging. And then I started my own blog. Sidhartharachikar.com was around the same time when I was writing different articles and 500, 600 word articles. This is like back in the day when SEO and all of that was right on the forefront. The second kind of a website is a typical corporate website that you would see like all these big companies, the corporate companies have their front end website where they talk about about U.S. services and all the different sub pages and stuff like that. Okay. And the third kind of website, what you would see in today's day and age is the community based websites like private social networks, like how you have Facebook and Instagram, other social networks. There are even platforms like Mighty Networks where you can even launch your own social media platform. There's also another platform called Tribe. There are many other platforms like this which you can actually go and set up your own private social network. So the third kind of website are community networks which you can. There's a lot more interaction that's happening inside. The fourth kind of a website are E commerce websites or shops. Basically you're going to be selling, you know, whatever goods that you have on your shop and powered by different platforms. Either it's Woocommerce or there's Shopify or you have Magento. And there are so many other technologies that are there in today's day and age that can actually power up your E commerce store, which is end to end. And the fifth kind of a website that you would see are web applications where you have to log in and then there is something to be done. For example, for my diamond members we have something called Polestar that I got custom built where once a person gets a login and password, they'll be able to track their own business. They'll be able to track their numbers, their habits, their activities, their charities and multiple things. I've actually custom built this as a web app which is not yet a mobile app. This, that helps my top customers track and evaluate themselves on their business. Now, if you're not a part of our community or if you're not yet a Diamond member, there's a link in the description below this podcast, you can go to sidzsids co diamond and come and check out the demo that I do. I only do this demo once in a month, so you can come and check out my next time when I do the demo of Polestar and you can actually see that web application in Write in action. Okay. And finally, number six are funnels. These are like website builders or page builders that are very focused towards a landing page for you to either capture a lead or capture details or sell a product and stuff like that. It's basically a webpage, but it's very geared towards a particular goal and stuff. So there's no difference between a regular website and a funnel, just that a funnel's usage is mainly to capture a lead or sell a product or, or take people through a particular journey. So this is another type of a website. And now we'll come into the next part of this podcast. So now that I've covered on the five different kinds of websites which are predominantly powering up the Internet today, let's get on to the next section of this particular podcast. But I'm going to talk about the future. Like, will these websites be relevant in the future? And my answer to that is.

See, media is going to keep evolving, content is going to keep evolving. It's just a matter of the connection that you have with your audience. For example, back in the day we used to be using pagers. Some of you may not even have been born during that time. And people used to just send text messages before WhatsApp came in. So the content has always been there, but the exchange and media has evolved over time. Similarly, I also believe that even though we have websites and we exchange media in a particular way right now in 2023, as I'm recording this podcast, by the year 2030 or by the year 2035, the way the media is exchanged is going to be different. And this is what, this is where I see things moving in the future. Number one is definitely websites are going to get AI powered. As it is, we are seeing websites like ChatGPT, which can literally generate a lot of text and pretty much now tools like GPT tools and OpenAI, all of these frameworks, they are using AI to generate different kinds of. You know, the generative AI concept has really picked up in the last year or so. So where I see things going in the future is when I say it's an AI powered website, I can see that the way websites would be in the future would not be as static as what it is today. It could be dynamic. Maybe websites, the whole look and feel and color can change every single day based on the mood. The content could also replaced. I know right now if somebody's building a website and having, you know, just structured content over there and people are seeing the same content every single day when they log in. Who knows in the future with AI, with a particular person logging in, let's say if I'm a father of two boys, when I go and log into a website, once the AI is able to detect my Persona, it gives me the content what will be relevant to me. So it'll actually customize the entire website for me rather than one kind of website for everybody, based on my IP address, based on my location and based on my demographic. So when I say AI powered, I feel websites can go to a whole different level in the future as because of the transformation that can happen within a matter of a second, within a matter of seconds. So information can be customized based on the user and can be customized based on what the person is actually looking for. The other thing that I see in the future is I can see that websites of the future are going to be more enabled for virtual reality and augmented reality. As of some of you may already know, Apple is also launching another headgear very similar to Oculus VR, like a VR headset, which is coming up very soon. And with Apple Vision and many other technologies that are moving towards augmented reality and virtual reality, what I see is even websites will be catering will need to be catered for that. Meaning you can't just have some boring text anymore. People may not be reading text, they want more visual elements. Okay, which leads me to the third point on where I see the future going in terms of websites is along with AI, VR and ar, there's going to be a more personalized experience to websites. I'm just emphasizing on the previous point when I say personalize is personalized and immersive, it's not just giving you the content based on what you're looking for, where you can also have interactive elements inside the website which give you what you really want. You know, why do we go to websites Today we go to read something or we go to consume some information, right? Whether we go to YouTube to listen to a watch a video or go to a podcast, listen to an audio, or we go to just Google to search for something, or we go to ChatGPT to get more to do some research, right? So the same activities of media exchange could be happening in a more in a different kind of an environment. An environment where you are more immersed in it and it is more personalized to you. Okay, now the fourth thing that I see where websites of the future will be moving is more in the space of Web3 and blockchain and you know, using those kind of technologies for security and stuff like that. What I mean by that is websites that are powered by blockchain and similar technologies, websites that may operate in a more decentralized manner enabling more user control, transparency and security, where even your server and all of the security connected to that can be, people are already thinking in that direction whether their digital assets are secured. The other thing where I see is.

The website of the future are going to have ultra high definition media. So what I mean by that is like with better bandwidth and display technologies, websites could Even feature like 8K video, 3D graphics, hi Fi audio and offering like much richer multimedia experiences than what it is happening right now. Right now you upload a jpeg or a PNG file and if it's more than 5 or 6 MB then it's kind of slows down the website and stuff. But what I see now is page speed is not going to be so much a problem because now the Internet speeds are anyway moving really high. And that's where I see websites in the future going. Another thing is I can see websites having more dynamic and real time content updates, leveraging AI and big data. Where I see things going is content might be updated in real time to provide the latest and most relevant information, ensuring that the users always have access to the most important and up to date content, news sites and stuff. Like right now I'm sure all these news channels and stuff, they've got some huge CMSS or content management systems at the back end and large teams that are feeding this content and publishing continuously, every single hour, every single minute on all the different updates. I think that entire area or that space can be disrupted or will be disrupted due to dynamic and real time content updates, leveraging AI and big data and of course information gathering from different segments. The other thing that I see happening in websites of the future are more advanced authentication, advanced biometric authentication, rather Than relying solely on passwords which many of us use. Maybe in the future websites may use facial recognition, fingerprint scanning or even heartbeat signatures and even other biometric just retina scan for enhancing security and ease of use. This is where I see things may be going in the future where it'll be again more personalized to the individual. This kind of.

Logging in through facial recognition fingerprint scanning, once the user has been mapped to a particular person or demographic based on you logging in with your advanced biometric authentication, you could get content which is very relevant to who you are and what you're looking for. So what I can see in the future is one person's Internet will be very different from another person's Internet because it's going to be so customized because the Internet is exploding with so much of knowledge and now it's all about relevance in the future. Okay, another thing where I see things are going in the space of website is 0UI 0 user interface. Let me explain to you more about this. So right now we are already seeing spaces where people, they don't need a user interface, they just need like a voice search or a gesture based navigation. And this is what I'm able to envision that in the future maybe websites, they need not have menus on the top and they need not have different sections and stuff like that. You know, voice search, gesture based navigation is going to become more prevalent and some websites may even move away from the traditional user interfaces as we've seen today, focusing on just voice, touch and gesture interactions. Why have so many sub pages and all that not required? Just maybe websites in the future will be so minimalistic and simplistic that you may just have one button, click on that button and request for what you want and get the answer. Already we are seeing this happen right now. If you're using ChatGPT, there's not much over there. You know, if you just see it's a very simple user interface and just a box where you can type in your message and get your answers. Okay, so another thing where I see websites in the future is having zero user interface. Another area where I see websites, you know, things are moving in this direction is more sustainable and eco friendly design. You know, with increasing awareness on environmental concerns, I think the future of websites may be prioritizing more on eco friendly hosting solutions. More like energy efficient and sustainable design practices that can actually help the environment. Now when you're using the Internet, you know, you won't be able to see the impact of it. But I think the more and more people are aware of the future of where the environment is going. They may also start choosing hosting providers that have zero carbon footprint and stuff like that. You know, recently companies like Apple also, they are working towards a 2030 vision or 2040 vision of going like zero carbon, meaning zero impact on the environment.

Be it their product sourcing, their product, their servers and multiple other things. So even this is where I see when it's not directly connected to the website, but it is going to have an impact on the way websites are going to be in the future. So now let's come to the third part of today's podcast. What are the steps that you need to take for you to be ready for the future? Number one is you got to start building your personal brand irrespective of what technology is going to be powering up your website. Start off with your own personal branded website. Just like how I have siddharthrajar.com, just start off with your name.com or okay, buy the domain and make sure you have your name dot com. Because even for my two sons, right the day that they were born, I went and bought their domain names because I know that in the future their address is going to be their domain name. So if you don't have your domain name, you don't have an address. Okay, this is the address of the future. This is the way people are going to recognize you. So start building your personal brand. And the other step I would recommend that you do is build a community site or build a community and have a website around that particular community. So I have internetlifestylehub.com which is my community site. I have siddharthraj.com, which is my personal branded website. My personal branded website is for people to get to know more about me, my story. In fact, you may be listening to this podcast on my personal branded website if you're a part of my community. And those of the people who want to join my community, they go to my community site, they get to know more about the community features, the community membership, and then they go and buy the membership directly from there. So I've made it, you know, two different spaces over here. Personal brand website is more for content and community website is more for information on people to join and there's transactions and everything happens there. And even my learning management system, my social network, my private social network and all of that is, is built on my community domain itself. So we have like society.inter-lifestylehub.com, which is my community network. We have shop.internetlifestylehub.com which is my e commerce shop. We have also my app.internetlifestylehub.com where I have my web app, Polestar app. Again, those of you who have not demoed Polestar, please come on, go to Sids Co diamond and come and check out the demo of my Polestar platform web application. And then we also have all our payment gateway systems. If anyone goes to learn.interentlifestylehub.com, they get to also access the learning management system where all the courses are kept over there. So the whole essence of this is that websites are evolving continuously. To get started right now, have a personal branded website and build a community website. If you're not a part of my community yet, please attend my next webinar by going to sidzsids Co Live. Attend my webinar and join our community. And once you're in, I will teach you exactly how to build this step by step. Okay, now, the reason I'm recording this podcast is to stay.

Aware of where the future is heading and as and when things get as and when things are improving or things are progressing towards in a particular direction, I'm going to be adapting and changing things. And the best part is once you're in my community, you will change those things and launch your own web portals along the way, as I'm doing it as well. And I've had multiple iterations of my website ever since I launched five years ago. My community, we have over 28,000 members at this point and I'm going to continuously keep innovating. You know, I love technology. I love to move fast with technology and I love to also, you know, move fast in a way that I know if whatever decision I make is going to be standing the test of time. Meaning that I would not just jump into technology just because it's there. Like, recently I moved into a new learning management system, keeping in mind that, yes, I know that this is going to be helping me be on this particular platform for at least the next five to ten years. Okay, so if you found this podcast useful, share your comments below and I look forward to sharing more insights like this in the future. Cheers. God bless and catch you in the next episode.