What's wrong with what we have?
Let's step back to the problem. You will recognise the issues but have probably come to accept them.
Right now, we're confronted with a few ways just to get to a website:
The first method is by entering the address. It's the way the World Wide Web was designed, with websites and pages are identified by their URL, and so, you can visit a website with the original method: typing in the URL into the address bar. You've got to take the time to type it out in full, and you need to have made the leap from the brand name to the URL because it might not be [brand name].com — let alone if you can remember the URL — and there's the chance you'll make a typo.
Bookmarks and favourites. Bookmarks mean you don't have to type out the URL because you've saved it in your browser. If you've organised your bookmarks the way you want them it might be a tap or few clicks away. But with dozens of bookmarks, they're not easily accessible. You also can't bookmark the whole web and you can't save everything you predict to visit in the future.
Search engines. Search engines have become the entry point and gatekeeper to the web. Their dominance, our reliance on them, and their dependence on ads, has resulted in reduced innovation. They are stale and ads get in the way of official results. There are increasing numbers of malicious results in ads and organic results.
Links. A link from an email or message is another way to get to a website. These blue underlined bits of text are opaque identifiers, and we tend to trust the website based on the source of the message, not where the link is going.
Even with all these methods, by the design of the Web, the URL is central to website identity. It's what you see in the address bar, along with a padlock (or not). So however you get to a website, you're expected to know the URL of the site because it's front and centre for you to review. Or, you might ignore it, which many do. Right now, looking at URLs and domains is important for trust, to make sure you're not being phished.
We know about a brand by its name; why can't we get there with its name?
Introducing Epi
Popular websites, industry sites, specialist, niche sites and many of your favourite websites are in Epi. With our launch engine, all it takes to get to a website is its name. No need to remember its address, no worries about mistyping a URL, and no scanning search results, especially when you're trying to find the official site and there's ads that interfere and harm trust.
The measure of a website appearing in Epi is trust. We manually review every site that is in Epi's trustnet, gauging its trust in the community online and off. For our launch engine, we endeavour to feature all trusted websites around the world. In our trustnet, we currently have a particular focus on global and industry brands, UK websites and US sites, and then Australia, Canada, France, Germany, and then Italy, Spain and Europe. As Epi runs on the Epiarc , the open network, others can publish the websites they trust on the Epiarc global system, and this will feed into Epi's trust model.
