Internet has become a common channel for people to inform, connect and communicate. Not only to show product-catalogues, the latest news, pictures of your holidays, but also to create communities, to link people who in real life would pass each other without greeting.

The bakery just around your corner usually does not have a fancy website. If it does, it usually contains "information". When not outdated (promotion-action of a few months ago) we can normally only find the address, contact-information and if we're lucky a picture of the bakery itself.

Some even provide a contact-form. Wow, so we ask for the opening hours for next week, with Christmas they might close earlier. Did you ever receive an answer? I didn't. Such a shame... "It takes me too much time to answer all these e-mails", he says. Well, why does your website have this form then? Because it CAN. Why offer something without using it's potential? So many people still haven't got a clue what to offer on the internet. Although so many of us know what we can find. A classic example of a mismatch between front and back of a shop. Same for what we can offer and our clients expects from us.

Sure, the bakery around the corner will have a hard time setting up a complete community website. Why doesn't he start offering bread baking machines (only?) over the internet? With bread mixes being sold both in the shop and via the website, where people can suggest their favourite bread mix receipes. In return, the baker in his shop offers a "monthly special" based on those suggestions. He, do we see the upward spiral, here?

Second, why not offer evenings for people to learn making and decorating tarts? In his own bakery, where else!? During these nights people can buy special offers, things they might need when doing this at home, sure. Internet is a very good channel to let people discover this all, making them enthousiastic, and can easily be used to create an upward spiral. Much easier than via a shop only.

I just give you an example of possibillities a simple baker has. It costs a bit of investing in time, and exploring possibillities that a baker will not really be aware of. Isn't he really aware of it all?

In the evening when he comes home, what does HE do on the internet? He surely uses Facebook (or any other community) to connect with friends, among whom there will surely be other bakers. What do they discuss, you guess? As a client, using all the possibillities the web has to offer, we are all so used to "the web has it all". But when we are the ones who can offer something, we usually take a step back in time, and think in the same way we did some 20 years ago.

Having nothing to offer on the web is so 2010. This is 2011. Come on.