Hypertext vs. Papertext: Keeping Information Current

One of the World Wide Web's seemingly best features is the fact that you can update information almost immediately. This is a significant change from the papertext world where you would have to reprint information and resend it, which could take weeks. On the Web, you can make changes in a matter of minutes or even seconds, and notify your customers by email. This allows you to update your customers on new products or other new information very quickly. It also gives you the ability to correct typos within minutes. And if you have software products, you can release bug fixes as soon as they are done. This saves you time and money, since you don't have to go through the process of making new disks and spending the money to send them out. You can simply put it on your Web page and refer customers there if they call with problems.

However, this ability to do instant updates has its drawbacks also. A company pamphlet or brochure would typically go through a number of people to be checked for accuracy and grammatical correctness. Unfortunately, many companies allow their Web pages to go through fewer layers of editing. Frequently, a Web page is put up by a single employee at the direction of his or her manager. This page might be checked by the manager, or perhaps one technical writer, but it rarely goes through the scrutiny that a papertext document would go through. And even if you do put your hypertext documents through the ultimate scrutiny, remember that your Webweaver still has ultimate control over what is put up. Be sure that you can trust your webweaver.

Another drawback of the ability to update information quickly is that information can easily be put out too quickly. This could be the case of sensitive company information that might accidentally be added to the company web page ahead of schedule, or notice of company bug fixes which may not have been fully tested yet. Just as it is possible to wait too long to notify your customers of something, it is also possible to notify them too quickly of something.

If you decide to publish your documents on the World Wide Web, update them frequently to keep your customers abreast of the most current information about your products, but don't abandon your current practice for checking published information. The World Wide Web is even more visible to your customers and your competition than your brochures. Don't do beautiful brochures and then lose a client based on some misinformation on your Web site.

Which path would you like to follow?

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