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Dan Bricklin: Democratizing the Web
securitas writes "This NY Times story featuring Dan Bricklin discusses the social impact of the Web on small businesses (Mom and Pop shops) and how the Web is leaving some behind. Bricklin wants to change that and make creating Web sites as easy (*cough*) as using a PC."
This article talks about *LISTENING* to small business about thier tech needs, not just shoving as much high tech gear into thier arms with very little idea how to use it... This is the right way to target small business I think..
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
I think the #1 threat to small business in general is complacency. There are lots of small businesses that I see go under. Mostly from the introduction of large chain stores, but I'm sure some took a dent from the Internet, but almost all of them did not do anything visibly different from the previous year when the new competition was nonexistent.
You mean its not like that already? Okay, with C, java, python - yeah, I expect people not to know. But I learned HTML in half an hour. Non-geeks CAN learn HTML, and its not that hard. Hell, these are small business owners, so they've at least got enough intelligence to perform their own accounting, HTML should be a breeze. Buy a book that explains HTML and how to use FrontPage. The only thing left is an easier interface for setting up shops online (PayPal is pretty close). Or, just make an HTML exporter for MS Word that produces actual useable webpages instead of bizarre imbedded crap.
Yes but this guy is after making it more accessable to more people. There is much more work to do still, especially for much the world that cannot even afford food, let alone PCs but it is still a valid idea.
"Those who cast the votes decide nothing; those who count the votes decide everything." (attrib. Joseph Stalin)
It may be dificult to do it well but that is like everything - most people can do most things at a pretty basic level. Being good at something (or at least better than most) takes some effort.
I work with a friend creating websites. He's a graphic artist and does _outstanding_ work. It's AMAZING how many small businesses DO NOT want to pay to get a website up, and we charge roughly HALF what others charge for creating websites.
We had a customer who was amazed after we created the site how much business he got. If more people would listen and read what's going on, they would realize there is some VALUE to having a website, even a basic one.
I don't see how it is expensive or difficult to put your business online. Use FrontPage or Dreamweaver to build the web site. Hosting a low bandwidth site should not cost more than $20/month, and getting merchant acounts is easy and cheap. It cost me ~$200 to set up my accounts with Visa, MC, Amex, and Discover, and as far as 'shopping carts', the gateway I use offers one for free. So, from what I've seen, a company that helps small businesses get on the web, is benefiting from the fact that these mom and pops assume it is very expensive and time consuming. (just my .02)
That is true but it's also a bit like saying why write a home mechanic manual for a car, since you want an expert to repair it? :) and that's probably a good ananolgy.
Although you may need an expert to build it, you should be able to do repairs etc with minimum knowledge. Making the web more accessable is good news for everyone.
As far as putting designers out of work, well DIY plumbing probably creates as much work as it removes
"Those who cast the votes decide nothing; those who count the votes decide everything." (attrib. Joseph Stalin)
From the article: " In the focus group, a woman who manages a bridal shop said she was concerned because customers asked if she has a Web site, and she has to tell them no.
"You hear that all the time in these sessions -- the customers are asking," Mr. Bricklin said behind the mirror. "Having a Web site has become a generational necessity for a lot of businesses. You lose the people under 30 without it."
You sure do lose people without a Web site. For us it would be unthinkable. You begin with a Web site and then build your company! But the average small business owner who is computer-phobic or at least computer-neutral doesn't think that way. And furthermore, even if they do decide to get with the program and get a Web site, they probably don't know what to do about it.
I see some touting the ease of HTML -- "They can make their own site, it's easy!" Well, no, HTML may be easy for us, but for someone who views computers as mysterious boxes the very idea of general programming concepts is beyond them. "I never was very good at math," they mumble when you suggest they learn HTML.
So what is a win-win situation? Suggest to these small business owners that they get some college kid to create a web site for them, and if price is an objection they can pay little and advertise it as a way for the kid to build his online portfolio. Hey, building a web site may be child's play around here, but you gotta start somewhere in the job market, and plenty of PHBs will be impressed at your extensive portfolio.
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It always amazes me that after studing for how ever many years, gathering 10 years of experience there are always those who feel technology should always be reduced to the lowest common denominator so every tom dick and harry can build enterprise solutions. I am in favour of technology being made accessible to the public but as with every task if you want it done properly there is some level of skill and expertise required. Is there really such an objection to a few IT professionals earning a crust by providing this service ??
Why dont people concentrate their simplifiction efforts on the ABC of the Legal matters, or DIY Surgery or a program that make Accountants redundant.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Putting up and maintaining a "web presence" (fuck, how I hate that term) diverts energy from servicing those clients. Certainly, it's not going to increase sales (we all learned that from the dot.com con games). All it can do (since they don't have the need or the resources to do a bang-up job) is make them look worse than the competition who doesn't have a site.
It also lets the competition scope them out for weaknesses ... a very bad thing in a competitive environment.
As far as every business having "appropriate contact information and busines description" - well, that's what business cards are for.
Many small businesses (not all, but many) survive because they are the only ones offering their specific product line in their area, so they can get away with higher prices, sloppy service, etc. What the Internet brings to them is the same thing large chain stores bring: competition with lower prices and better service.
I've bought stuff off of some really ugly web sites (can you say Yahoo shopping?) because they had the best prices and good shipping & service policies. Deploying a web store is easy enough already. There's no reason these mom and pop stores can't use the Internet as an opportunity to expand their operations. The keys to their success on the Internet will be the same as in any other large market: distinguishing yourself by offering a unique product, an standard product at the lowest price, or a standard product with the best support.
From The article
What does a store gain from having a small web site? I think that a web site for a small shop will not do any good unless the costumers can find it in google when they are searching for the products directly, and the site has, at least, descriptions, photos and prices of the items to be sold.
Is a small web site that does not list inventories, and just offers a street address and an e-mail any good?
Do it right. There's nothing worse for a company than to have a website that only works correctly with one particular browser (it still happens today occasionally) or does not comply with the KISS principle (JAVA for a simple navigation bar).
The GUI editors like FrontPage and Dreamweaver are great for starting out, but when it comes to making good websites, they can only go so far and you need code. For example, for a boss who wanted 15 scanned documents posted on the web one on each page, I wrote a PHP script that used the querystring to load a particular image named by it's number, and autogenerated the PREV, 1-15,NEXT navigation on the bottom. Resulted in ONE page to handle it all. If I would have done the way she would have, then it would have taken more time and needed 15 redundant HTML pages.
I also think people become to dependent on the GUI editors. Instead of using one CSS file to handle formatting of content, people depend on DreamWeaver to replicate changes. May not sound significant, but when you have a large site, making one change is better than a hundred changes, even if it is automated.
$cat
If the store gets an email address and actually reads the email, that makes them much more accessible.
Midgard Project - Open Source CMS
Franchised retailing and chain stores do exist pretty much everywhere in the developed world, but the franchise and chain store is far more pervasive there than it is elsewhere.
So is this a good thing or a bad thing? I dunno. The efficient logistics of big retail probably means stuff is cheaper in the US under such a system than it is with more chaotic retailing. It also leads to staff who know nothing about the goods they sell, and a conspicuous sameness about the goods on offer. But then again, is eclectic, funky, and individual shops really the best thing creative people could do with their lives?
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
I don't think that there is anything wrong with a small business going online, as long as they don't get bilked by some web hosting provider that uses a bunch of acronyms to convince them of the benefits of their "cheap" $30/month hosting package while knowing full well that the site will probably get about 10 hits per month.
Also, I've seen very often where a small business will go all out and get a web page set up, looking good (or bad), and have all the great stuff about their business. Somebody's son designed it, or the bizness hired the same company that is hosting it to design the site too. The problem comes with updating it.
Often the owners of the business are far too concerned with actually taking care of their business and they either don't know how to or forget to update their web site. In the end, when people go to "grandmasflowerstore.biz" they see the site from early 2001 when the site first launched. It looks dated, and people get a bad impression from the old content and prices/specials.
Actually, there is a pretty compelling reason for any business to have *some* sort of site - the yellow pages.
... especially if compared to moving to a bigger yellow page ad.
Rates to advertise in the yellow pages are pretty high for small businesses, but it *does* generate interest. A web site is a great way for a business to "extend" their yellow page ad. Yes, it only works for the percentage of people who have web access, but it still can be worth it.
Put your URL in your yellow page ad, and that way you can have a small ad that can expand to 10 (virtual) pages (for a certain percentage of your viewers). Most businesses that I've talked to that have yellow page ads were able to see that value very quickly
Although you may need an expert to build it, you should be able to do repairs etc with minimum knowledge. Making the web more accessable is good news for everyone.
Yeah, and things like changing oil and spark plugs fit the bill. However, unless you yourself are an expert, next time your car needs the head gasket replaced, you're taking it in. That's all there is to it.
Web's the same way. You want a static page, well, that's pretty easy, and well within the capabilities of something like Frontpage or whatever. Need dynamically created content linked to an SQL database? Sorry, but you're not doing this yourself unless you're an expert. There is pretty much no way of making this available to the average schmoe, unless you want to make a cookie-cutter it-installs-itself version.
That's just how life works - there are aspects of both car repair and web design that are within grasp of morons, and aspects that aren't. And I think html is already pretty easy to work with thanks to creation engines (hell, it ain't that hard to write in emacs, but I digress).
Oh, and for what it's worth, the article kind of read like an ad for that guy's small-business web hosting. It seems to me that Bricklin's less interested in making information freely available than he is in the proliferation of for-profit tools - namely his. So don't forget the conflict of interest here.
Before the flames start, I'm NOT a web designer. I'm the guy with the shitty page written in a text editor. But at least it loads faster than you can blink. ;)
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
..Bricklin wants to change that and make creating Web sites as easy....
I know how to create a web site, I know all the goodies. You know *why* I can't create a good website?
I have no artistic talent. None whatsoever. I see all the nicely designed sites out there and think, "Sure, no sweat."
But then I try and they look horrible. All the HTML works fine, in fact the last site I did worked on 12 different platforms and were all viewed the same.
But it still looked like crap.
Anyone got some artistic talent they don't need?
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
The second sentence is the rough spot. You may be able to use Frontpage or Dreamweaver to create a home page that looks nice, attracts customers, is easy to use, etc, but I would hazard to say that most small business owners aren't.
.), is easily expandable, is well commented (so anyone who knows basic html can immediately jump in and start maintaining it), and works smoothly across browsers (especially using FrontPage!).
Even fewer are able to create a homepage that loads quickly, ranks well in search engines, displays on a number of devices (cell phones . .
Yet for online stores, these things are almost all crucial to keeping sales up! There are so many places online to buy things, if a store's homepage doesn't raise itself above the flock, it's not getting many sales.
A competent web designer, building a page on the scale you seem to be indicating (online shopping), will likely charge at least $700-1000. That's several times what you had been estimating for first year startup costs.
However, in the long run, time saved (the web site should be quick and easy to update, and not need it very often except for news and new products), bandwidth saved (often there will be hundreds of k difference between an amateur designed web page and a page the looks exactly the same done by an experienced web designer), and smooth experience for the shoppers (leading to extra sales), hiring a competent web designer from the start will likely make a small business money.
For to end yet again.
I'm exaggerating a little, but there's an important point here, and I'll illustrate it with a little bit of personal history. In 1985, I was told by a well-meaning acquaintance that I might want to reconsider my chosen career path because 4GLs were going to make programmers obsolete. Programming was going to be easy enough that anyone could do it.
That argument was already recycled at the time, although my would-be mentor probably didn't realize it. Compilers for high-level languages were originally going to put programmers out of a job. COBOL was going to be so much like English that businessmen (not businesspeople, it was the 1950's) would be able to understand it.
The flaw in this whole theory is vital to understanding business, and where the future of programming is likely to go. If you own a business and your product is not computer software or hardware, you do not make your money from writing code. You spend your time learning the skills relevant to your business. You research the market for what you sell, not the latest programming language.
Programs capture knowledge. That is one of their most important functions. As programmers, we have a great deal of specialized knowledge that is common across broad ranges of software. We know a variety of algorithms, strategies for error handling, data formats, network protocols, etc. None of that has anything to do with most businesses, any more than the guy running the sub shop down the street needs to know the electrical code.
Businesses use software the way they use lots of things. It makes no sense for them to learn to wire the building or build their web site. The sub shop owner has business needs. He needs lighting and power for the cash register, and a refridgerator over there. He may need to put up a web site advertising his business. But his interest in programming is at the content level: deliver web pages with particular information, and maybe take orders.
Putting up web sites from a tool that just lets users write some content, and select some options will necessarily limit those users to the options that are available. The full flexibility to innovate requires a tool that acts more like a language. Doing new things is a Turing equivalent problem. Doing existing things, even in new combinations does not have to be. The majority of users will never be programmers in the sense that specialists are. It doesn't matter that huge numbers of kids have learned some programming in school. I took biology in high school. I'm not a biologist.
It's all about division of labor. People who aren't overly technophobic will use tools that programmers provide. Millions of people use word processors, spreadsheets, presentation packages, and even indirectly, databases. Most won't ever write a macro for their word processor or a schema for a database, nor should they. They use the tools that specialists provide to help them do what they do well.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
However in many colleges the people learning about web sites do not learn about building decent web sites, do not learn about accessibility, do not learn about usability, do not learn about maintaining the site, do not learn about reading logs to see if the site is used.
They do learn how to make huge and pointless flash animations, how to make IE only sites, how to make sites that show off fancy (and usually unnecessary) features, how to add in every feature they've heard of.
Too often they're like the webmaster I talked to once who (several years back when bandwidth was not easily accessible to most people) repeatedly said that streaming audio and video were to be an important part of his site. When I said that this would be a problem for much of his audience on slow lines, he told me "Then they don't deserve to see my site."
And for far too many, HTML is still one of those opaque programming language things for geeks. And often enough the web site designer types are told that such things are only for geeks and that learning any of those icky details is beneath them.
I'd still recommend the college kid - but ideally with sensible supervision.
I have seen many small businesses (especially small businesses in fact) that have been convinced to put up a web site and then it just sits there and collects dust. I can't count the number of times I go to a site and find out of date event lists and calendars, or menus that don't reflect the current offerings, or even directions and phone numbers that are no longer valid.
Just HAVING a web site is not enough. Many small businesses are done a disservice when they are pulled into the modern world, convinced to put up a web site by some hi-tech evangelist, and then abandoned as the real (but boring) work of updating and maintaining the site sets in.
Creating a website is easy, we have clients who knew nothing about HTML or the web that have put together simple sites for their businesses.
Creating a website that actually looks good and works well and that actually is a benefit to the business is an entirely different matter.
What we come across time and time again is a business that has created a site themselves but the site is doing nothing for them because it wasn't built search engine friendly, or the graphics are 200+k each or they are using dark red on a dark blue (insert own bad colour scheme here! ) background making the page unreadble. Many people seem to think that : more crazy gif animations = better website.
Most people don't realise that they have to prepare their site for the search engines, or that multiple 200+k graphics are going to make visitors go elsewhere.
The other big misconception is that once they have a website, that's it, they're on the web, they're going to make money.
Trying to persuade a client that they need to update their site on a regular basis and that they should put the URL everywhere they can (business cards, store window etc etc ) is usually met with the response 'oh, ok' but then no action.
To sum it up, creating a site is one thing, but it's only the first step to a successful site and most people don't realise that.
Immediately after the merger, my email became unreliable. I would get several bounce messages per week from an active majordomo list I was on. On more than one occasion, inbound email simply stopped altogether for over a day, sending (the same) bounce messages to correspondents to myself and my staff.
After establishing that they had no intention of diagnosing and fixing the problem, I moved my account to another provider and duly informed Interland. I did not demand a refund for the two months of inadequate service.
They kept charging me $95 per month (yeah, too much, another reason to switch), so I emailed and called, getting assurances that the problem was resolved and my money would be refunded. This occurred on three occasions (amounting to four cancellations, and three promises of a refund). The details of the incompetence and confusion of the cutomer service in this incident are largely lost in the mists of time, but I recall it was generally a big waste of time.
Eventually they stopped billing my credit card, but the refund never arrived. I am of the opinion that Interland stole $570 cash from me, as well as several hours of my time, not to mention a competent hosting service.
They sent me an exit interview email when they finally closed the account. I told the story in great detail, but never got any further response.
If this is how they intend to get small businesses online let me just say that I have my doubts about how well it will go.
mt
Allow me to enlighten you.
The small business people being discussed are people who wouldn't know Dreamweaver from a hole in the ground, and whose time -- that is the time it would take them to learn what it is -- is extremely precious in a purely financial sense.
They do not know what they are shopping for in the first place -- not knowing the difference between a domain name registrar and a hosting company and a web design house, for instance -- much less how to go about shopping around for them. How the hell should they know how many [k|M|G]b of storage a month they need? Or what bandwidth would be the best use of their money? Or what features they might want? How should they know whether they need the $20/mo account with static pages or the $200/mo account with php/mysql/etc, when they have no idea what these things are or why -- or how -- they'd use them.
Sure, they could learn all this. But it takes time and effort which your typical small business really doesn't have to invest. They no more want to implement their own web presence than they want to implement their own plumbing.
From the point of view of a small business, hiring someone to develop -- and subsequently maintain -- their web presence is like installing a shunt directly into their bank accounts. Being non-techies, they have no idea how to manage a technical contractor nor their technical contracting expenses, even those as humble as a high school student slinging some HTML on a summer vacation, as some idiot proposed.
The fact of the matter is that unless you know what you're doing -- and it is precisely people who don't know what they're doing when it comes to the web that we are discussing -- getting your small business on line can be very expensive and time consuming. It can take your company to the cleaners.
The commonest way that small businesses -- and the geeks that work for them -- screw this one up is that the business hires someone to "make a web site for them", and the geek obligingly puts together some static web pages, buys them a domain, and parks the pages there. The geek never mentions maintainability, and the small business never thinks to ask.
And the next thing you know, the small business has to pay a specialist every time they want to change a price on the web site.
Another thing the small business never thinks to ask about is backups. Or content versioning.
All these things start nickle-and-diming the business to death. That is why prudent small businesses are wicked leery of moving on to the web. And why this company is going to do well: they're basically providing small businesses with a Content Management System. They won't need specialists to maintain their pages for them, and their costs will be strictly controlled.
-*- Any technology indistinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced -*-
Interestingly enough my original submission was not posted in its entirety. The last line originally read:
Bricklin is now CTO of Interland, a company which I have few positive things to say about.
We were with HostPro as well -- phenomenal QoS and customer service -- I recommended them to several people. Then came Interland.
I won't go into all of the sordid details here but Interland has just sucked. We have noticed brief and minor improvements in service when we compalined loudly wnough, but those were just blips. The service continued on its downward slide consistently.
Recently we had no access to e-mail or administration of the site for over 2 MONTHS!!!
We finally have a new sales rep who seems to be responsive, but we shall see how long this continues and are preparing to move to another provider if the promises receive no follow-through.