Internet bandwidth is increasing across the globe, expanding access and making it possible to share more and more multimedia and high resolution assets. This evolution of the infrastructure presents opportunities for retailers to enhance their on-line shop fronts and engage the audience with compelling visuals.

But where is the Web going in terms of its underlying logic?

Tim Berners-Lee, the founder of the Web, sees a ‘semantic’ version of the Web emerging. What does this mean? He describes it as follows:

“I have a dream for the Web [in which computers] become capable of analyzing all the data on the Web – the content, links, and transactions between people and computers. A ‘Semantic Web’, which should make this possible, has yet to emerge, but when it does, the day-to-day mechanisms of trade, bureaucracy and our daily lives will be handled by machines talking to machines. The ‘intelligent agents’ people have touted for ages will finally materialize.”

This is therefore a vision of the Web where machines talk to each other. Today the content of the Web is set up for human consumption. Tomorrow it will be for machines to digest and use in a more intelligent way on our behalf. One obvious example of how this could impact retailers is in product searches. Search-engines are already a very important tool for online shoppers. A Nielsen study found that more than one third of shoppers use search engines. More computer friendly content will make search engines even more important to shoppers, and consequently to retailers. According to Yahoo, "enhanced search results" drive 15 percent more clickthroughs for many websites.  Some retailers are already adopting some of the underlying technologies to support the new Web. Best Buy released their entire product catalog in RDF, a structured data format which is designed to be more machine friendly.

The true impact of the evolving Web is hard to predict but we do know it is evolving and it represents both a challenge and a huge opportunity for retailers.