HTML to AI: 25 years of customer experience

Hello Dotdigital blog readers, I’m Graham Thatcher. If you don’t know me, I’m the founder and director of Chief PR.  In the past 25 years, I have seen a remarkable transformation in the digital space – from the bare bones of HTML to AI-driven personalized customer experiences. As Dotdigital celebrates its 25th anniversary, I’d like to share my journey from just starting in the industry to the exciting world of ecommerce today. 

With all of these developments in AI, machine learning, and more, it’s easy to take these advancements for granted. But as we look back, we remember the incredible period of innovation, and Dotdigital has been at the forefront every step of the way.

Early beginnings

With my qualifications in design and communications, I was set on a career in public relations. My big break came at a full-service agency in Southampton, with the lofty title of Account Executive. On my first day, I was dressed in a suit and tie (we wore them every day regardless of whether we had a client meeting or not).

On my first day at the agency, I was introduced to a man called Martin. I was told that I would be helping him and eager to impress I introduced myself. He looked up and presented me with a document that for a long time would not leave my side. It was called ‘The Bare Bones of HTML’ and that was it, I was expected to start creating websites.

Of course, I had used the web but I had no idea how to create a website. So, I sat at my PC and was told to right-click and view the ‘source code’. Nothing made sense. I thought I was going to be working with newspapers and magazines, not be an IT geek. But breaking into agency life wasn’t easy so I gave it a go.

For the next few years, my life involved creating HTML files in Notepad and using my increasingly coffee-stained and dogeared Bare Bone of HTML to code pages and then pestering others in the office to check what they looked like on their screens, as well as on different browsers (Netscape Navigator, AltaVista, and, of course, Internet Explorer). My pre-lunch ritual would be to send completed pages to be uploaded via WS_FTP, hoping that on my return the painstakingly slow dial-up connection would have coped (uploading a images folder was a whole other story).

Early web projects

The types of websites we were creating were basic, to say the least by the standards of Dotdigital customers today. The BBC website had only gone live in 1997, and it will not escape the attention of the Dotdigital history fans that it was only a few years later that the web design agency Ellipsis Media was established in Croydon and built what would go on to become the global success, DotMailer, for the Beeb.

For me, web projects at this time typically involved digitizing print-based product catalogs, whether for art galleries, chemical and electronic component companies, or training providers. It is worth pointing out that digital photography was largely the preserve of professional photographers at this stage, so any print image that needed to be made into a .gif or .jpg needed scanning – no mean feat when you have a 350-page brochure to get online.

Once organizations had their v1.0 online presence and their own experience of being online developed, demands and expectations began to evolve quickly. One day a client came into the office as he was under pressure to make an offer on a house, but his wife was overseas. So, I abandoned my usual pre-lunch plan to quickly create a webpage with property photos and he called his wife from the office to give her the URL to take a look. Imagine how many properties and photos are uploaded every day to Rightmove.

Soon, it was no longer enough to display products online and companies large and small wanted to sell online. Quickly my now proficient HTML abilities were becoming redundant, as Java, C++, and Perl scripting skills became the order of the day for ever more complex projects.

It was October 1999 when I decided to retire my notepad and recycle my Bare Bones HTML. I was ready to return to my strength: writing about technology’s potential.

In the following two years, the pace of innovation surged. I found myself in San Francisco with a group of journalists. We talked to Silicon Valley start-ups about how they were working with retailers to provide email management for online support, intelligent FAQs, automated online assistants, live chat, and cross-channel customer experience of the future. The technology was available (for those who could afford it), and every year, PR professionals and the media would speculate, “Will this be the first e-Christmas?”

The future is here

Now I listen to Dotdigital experts talk about what is coming next and learn about what its customers are doing, it can be easy to take it all for granted. We all have come to expect so much from the organizations that we interact and transact with. But the past 25 years have truly been transformative on a global scale and if anything, the pace of innovation is accelerating and Dotdigital has been there every step of the way.

Sometimes, I think I could have been braver and thrown myself further into the deep end. But there is huge satisfaction that comes from sharing stories that help organizations to learn more and make the right decisions for them on their digital journeys.

So, for old times’ sake </html>.