12.22.06
Do you still have that old version of my web site?
I got a call today from an Internet marketing professional that asked me if I had an old version of a web site that we built years ago. She wanted to see how it looked before “another” company redesigned it after yet another takeover. I DO have the backup of the files from the original web site, but since this person calling wasn’t my customer, I obviously couldn’t give it to her. But I DID have a solution for her that is also a tool for any good Internet marketing professional.
The solution is The Wayback Machine. I was SURE that she had heard of it, so I modestly said to her “well, you could get it from the Wayback Machine”. She said “what’s that?”. Yippee! Someone that doesn’t know about this useful tool - I can help her.
If you go to http://www.archive.org, you can see captures of web sites going back sometimes for 10 years. This is a really neat way to see how a company has changed their web site over the years. It is also way to capture some code from lost web sites. It is a VERY slow site. Sometimes when you use it to recover an old version of a web site, it could take minutes for the pages to load. But wow is it fun. You can get quite a chuckle at older versions of your web site.
Since this marketing professional just wanted to SEE what the old version of the site looks like, this is the perfect solution for her. I was also able to tell her that one of the later versions of that particular web site lost the company a lot of money when they took their order forms and turned it into a multi-page wizard. I will go into that in another article on usability and order forms.
Another cool reason to use the WayBack machine is to look at the web sites of your competitors. This tool is just one of MANY tools that are free and at your disposal to see what your competitors are doing. I will show you more of these tools in future articles.
So there you have it, you can use the Wayback Machine in a pinch to see older versions of your web site, and those of your competitors.
Let me know what you think!
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