In the final of our sponsor interviews, we talk with John Moore from *experience.

Webstock: *experience is a fairly new company. Tell us about how you got started and what your focus is?

John: Well, like all good Wellington companies we started over a coffee – in our case at the Chocolate Fish Cafe! From our design agency / corporate backgrounds we saw the gap for a specialist online experience company – a company with a brand and communications focus, and the ability to be the neutral bridge between customers, business, and the mysteries of web development.

After that first coffee the brand, name and business plan fell into place and *experience was born in mid-2006. We quickly picked up some great clients – large corporates, government agencies and smaller organisations – and we haven’t stopped since.

So now we’re living the dream – our clients tell us they work with us because we keep them real. We challenge them, we advocate for their customers, we champion their business targets, we translate design and technology to create great online experiences and we have fun! Our team is awesome – they’re experienced, dedicated, and passionate; we continue to work with some of New Zealand’s finest technology houses, and our clients all know how to work our coffee machine – we’re loving it.

Webstock: What’s the importance of someone’s “experience” when they interact with a website? Does it really matter? Aren’t they just trying to do something?

John: Exactly! For us, the “experience is everything”… so no matter how you get people to your website, how flash your tv ad is, how flash your flash is, or how big your logo is – if people can’t achieve what they want on your site then… FAIL! That experience becomes your brand, your reputation, your credibility… and it’ll become the dinner story, the blog post, the tweet. So it’s vital that companies get the experience right – and it’s our job to help them do just that.

Webstock: With regard to the “global economic situation” what changes are you expecting to the web and online industry here in the next couple of years?

John: The current global economic situation just means we’ve all got to get smarter. We need to work even harder to get our clients to maximise the new, smarter, leaner, more agile technologies and get their websites working harder – and get them out there in the smartest way possible! (and we’re hoping the term ‘enterprise solution’ will disappear from the online vocabulary too…)

Webstock: *experience is associated with Meg Pickard at Webstock. Why is Meg a good fit with *experience?

John: Miriame and I come from a brand and communications background and (as the rest of our team will tell you!) we’re news junkies too… as such we’ve always admired the Guardian as a publication – it’s always been a leader –in its ‘old media’ form – and now especially in its new media evolution.

So when we saw that Meg was coming out for Webstock we jumped at the chance to be involved! And we love that she describes herself as a ‘Creative geek’ – as slightly geeky creatives, we should be a good match.

Webstock: You’ve both been to every Webstock to date. What brings you back and has attracted you as a sponsor this time?

John: We still remember that day (in our previous lives) when you came to us with a twinkle in your eye and this great idea for a thing called “Webstock”… back then we were rapt to help craft the Webstock brand strategy, and this year we were really proud to be able to step up and be sponsors of what is now an awesome, world renowned event.

Why do we keep coming back? We love the Webstock buzz – the world class speakers (yay Meg), the chance to catch up with our mates (that includes all our clients!), to see everyone in our industry, and to watch all the newbies getting involved – magic!

Webstock: Thanks John. We think it’s magic too!