DIGISCAPES - a manifesto

DIGISCAPES- a manifesto

In the era of cookie-cutter websites and funnels, we click through stories, through websites.

Web, marketing and branding gurus bombard us with tips on how to build a memorable brand

and how to stand out.

But what they actually do, is tell you how to use algorithms.

What is truly memorable, is a different web presence.

In the era of emerging AI, web templates, no-code hosting services, there is a language, a

common undedrstanding of what a web presence should look like.

Your site has to have the template, designed for clickability.

Your interactions should spark conversions.

Your social media profiles are the top of the funnel.

It all comes down to selling more, selling faster.

It all becomes a buzz, a noise, always present, and I noticed it started to make me

feel anxious – about missing out on that offer, about missing something important.

And mostly, anxious about my own presence.

Most of it does not really resonate.

I like artisan stuff, I like meaning, deep interactions, and warm, fuzzy newsletters.

I love lightweight websites that do more than sell, they are a work of art, a testimony,

and a thought-out interaction.

They facilitate a process for a visitor so they can really land into what you are offering.

Tehy don’t overbombard you with offers.

They speak to you on a deep, emotion level, and connect with you through the

languages of words, visuals, and interaction.

The evolution of web presence

I own some books with collections of websites through the ages. Some are really

quite ancient, from a distant technological era of the Y2K, and some from the Flash wera.

These sites were all unique.

They wanted you to explore, to click around. They engaged with you in a creative manner.

They were little works of art, perfectly put together to share a story of a brand, to facilitate

interactions, and they made themselves memorable. They used typography, illustration,

and its own gamification logic.

They did not beg you to stay.

At this point, I am even dubious if the popupr that sense you’re leaving the site are

really doing their job. Are they really retaining users on the site?

What are really those journeys like?

Everything became standardized.

Buttons, pixel heights, shadows. Trends emereged and wee followed them – until

they weren’t trendy anymore.

In the past few years, we are seeing a new era in design, with lots of beauiful,

high quality images and photographs, we are not even able to discern what is real

and what is generated.

We churn out one-pagers and call it a day. There are tools that help us make

beautiful websites, but these tools impose a limit on our creativity.

Those who still use raw code are rare and perhaps vanishing.

Noone really has time to create interactive graphics and illustrations.

And even if they have time, that is, projec budget, they want to optiize it

towards conversion.

What is real conversion and what kind of conversion really matters?

Real conversion is not a bloated newsletter that people subscribe to in order

to win a trip to Bahamas.

To know what real conversion is, and why it matters, we need to first understand

the needs of a business owner, or a business itself.

What kind of relationships do you want to build with your public?

What is your way of working with clients? Who are they, what do they come to do,

and why are they staying?

How do we approach them – how do we come one step towards them? Do we

need accessibility – can we make it creative? Where are they staying in the

physical world – how do we build bridges between the two, and, of course,

make it fun?

Fun is the most memorable

When we learn something new, we need to repeat it only 20 times to remember

it if we are having fun, as opposed to 300 times if we are not having fun.

Fun, beauty and emotional connection are kind of similar in this respect – we key

a newly acquired knowledge to something dear, endearing to us. This is why it stuck.

This is why we remember random facts – because they are fun.

Beauty has another function. Beauty, as well as a slow breath, is a biological marke

r of luxury, of a life that is free of danger and urgency.

This is why luxury is associated with beauty. Are today’s luxury brands creating

inherently beautiful experiences, or are they just sticking to status symbols?

As with emotional connections, these activate our neural systems beyond the brain –

they create vicseral feelings, and connect with the body intelligence on a deep level.

This is why we remember emotions – this is why we associate data with emotions,

and this is what NLP calls keying.

We key memorable experiences

At Digiscapes, we strive to integrate design tools with neuroscience to create

memorable web experiences. The web is a Wild, and it is always watching - our

every move.

We scout scapes, scale scopes and build spaces, where the Wild can breath life

radically into the sterile digital terrain.