CoastCapitalJulieAs 2006 progressed I began to notice more and more web sites featuring a “Web Host”.  Some for pure personality, some for attempting to help a user navigate through a site, some just because it’s cool.  Whatever the intent was, 2006 was certainly ”The Year of the Web Host”.  Fulled by the prolifereation of broadband and marketers looking for some form of differentiation online, the “Web Host” is everywhere.  Even we at Karo are in the middle of implementing a “Web Host” with one of our clients as a tool to help users navigate a fairly complicated product order.

 Here are some examples of Web Hosts that I have seen:

  • Phillips uses a host for their new “body shaver”
  • Dell uses a web host for walking a user through the configuration process when ordering a computer
  • Coast Capital Savings uses “Julie” to bring personality to banking and attempts to help users with their natural language queries
  • Royal Caribean uses multiple web hosts for their Freedom of the Seas website
  • Elan uses a host for their ski selector
  • CashAdvance.com also uses a web host for an intro.
  • And the latest one I have come across is an innovative recruitment site from Accenture called BackStageatAccenture.com which not only uses a “Web Host”, but also uses other “Web Hosts” which are actual Accenture employees providing testimonials.

This list is just a start.  It will be interesting to see how this type of approach will evolve through 2007.