Dan Bricklin: Democratizing the Web 169
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."
Small shops? (Score:5, Interesting)
*shrug*
Re:Small shops? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Small shops? (Score:2)
Re:Small shops? (Score:3, Interesting)
Here in the UK, there is a law to prevent discrimination against disabled people, the DDA. It covers things like having ramps to access buildings, and so on. It also covers websites - do you expect the average Frontpage user to know the first thing about making a website accessible? The government are only in the process of assessing how bad the situation is - they aren't enf
Re:Small shops? (Score:3, Insightful)
Allow me to enlighten you.
The small business people being discussed are people who wouldn't know Dreamweaver from a hole i
Re:Small shops? (Score:4, Informative)
Yup. Sure. Uh-huh. (Score:2, Redundant)
I think this is right. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I think this is right. (Score:2, Insightful)
This is not about "democratizing" anything. This is about selling web pages to small business. Of course you have to listen to your target market. Nothing new here.
Re:I think this is right. (Score:2)
complacency (Score:5, Insightful)
Not Complacency (Score:2, Informative)
33% after 2 years
50% after 4 years
60% after 6 years
http://www.sba.gov/advo/stats/sbfaq.html
lots of small businesses close for reasons other than $.
On the same note... (Score:5, Interesting)
Poor analogies perhaps...anyway...my main point is this, you *can* do it yourself, but it'll never be as good as having a specialist do it.
I know I'd rather pay a plumber to install my heating than end up with a leaky botch job that I put in myself.
Re:On the same note... (Score:3, Insightful)
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
Some things NEED an expert (Score:5, Insightful)
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. ;)
Re:Some things NEED an expert (Score:2)
True.
Somewhat-OT rant: I'd love to have an option to pay a mechanic or utility guy an extra $20/hour or whatever to put up with a clueless n00b who asks lots of silly questions. (or even $10/hour to have a nice cup of STFU and just watch :)
My computer's a part of me. I wouldn't do anything
Re:Some things NEED an expert (Score:2)
You take it in and pay to have it done quickly or you can do it yourself for free at the expense of your time. If you have nothing better to do with your time then knock yourself out.
Re:On the same note... (Score:1)
now... where did I put that engine hoist
Re:On the same note... (Score:2)
Re:On the same note... (Score:2)
Small businesses should be able to get websites by looking at a catalogue to find one that they like, buying it, and filling in the blanks. Sure, there are a lot of things you have to get right when running a web site, but the te
Re:On the same note... (Score:2)
Kinda like doing your own plumbing, but with a chainsaw as your only tool. Well, I guess you can use it to cut the PVC pipe...
It already is as easy as using a PC (Score:2, Informative)
800 pound gorilla (Score:5, Interesting)
As added features, they should also have free samples. And attractive customer representatives. Plus, snacks.
But at least a website.
Re:800 pound gorilla (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Nothing new (Score:1)
Increased revenue (Score:2)
They're in a specialist business with a lot of people willing to do some searching on the net, so that makes this a bit different case from the four-in-every-town small shops, but nontheless.
Reinout
Re:800 pound gorilla (Score:3, Insightful)
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 t
Re:800 pound gorilla (Score:2, Informative)
I have to disagree. Just about ANY business depends on attracting new customers in addition to servicing your current customers. A "web presence" doesn't need to be a full online catalog. It doesn't even need to be particularly dynamic. It can be as simple as information about services/products and hours if you're a store.
Let's say you're a small landscaping business that would like to attract some new customers. Wouldn't having a s
Re:800 pound gorilla (Score:2)
Re:800 pound gorilla (Score:2)
I can't remember 10 "random" numbers that I see on a sign or vehicle, but I can easily remember a two or 3 word string at a glance.
Re:800 pound gorilla (Score:2)
Re:800 pound gorilla (Score:3, Insightful)
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
Re:800 pound gorilla (Score:2)
Essentially, it's using the classifieds as you suggest for yellow pages ads.
A small business site need not be more than an intro to the people and product -- a nice friendly picture of the store, a quick rundown of
Re:800 pound gorilla: I Disagree.. (Score:2)
My father owns a business. A farm. He grows corn, beans, wheat, and some clover here and there. He sells to local elevators, and knows all the people he interacts with. He doesn't use a computer, much less have a website. He doesn't need one.
However, you might correct yourself and say that all SERVICE businesses should have a website. I agree, as another form of communication, and advertising is a great asset. I use a local database of local businesses quite often, www.activedayton.com, and i really
Re:800 pound gorilla: I Disagree.. (Score:2)
Even farmers can benefit from a little extra advertising. For example, if your father grows clover, then he almost certainly has some bees. You would be surprised what people will pay for honeycomb, and selling a little sweet corn at retail prices doesn't hurt either.
Your father is in a commodity business with very few potential buyers. In that sort of a situation keeping prices down is paramount. However, increasingly the farmers that stay in business are those that are able to run some sort of a bus
Re:800 pound gorilla: I Disagree.. (Score:2)
true, but it's a VERY limited field, with very high risks, to do anything but regular farming. if an investment goes bad, you lose everything. and you have no way to get back in, ever. you're basically screwed, and your family too, for life.
oh, and no bees. i don't even see why you would think we'd keep bees? maybe you're from new york or california, who knows.
Re:800 pound gorilla (Score:2)
However, online "Yellow Pages" such as http://yp.yahoo.com and other directory services are cost effective enough to justify that cost though, usually free.
What, easier then this? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What, easier then this? (Score:2)
Besides, "learning" HTML (otherwise known as memorizing the syntax) doesn't make you any more able to build a decent web site than does memorizing C syntax make you a programmer. HTML has as little to do with building good web sites as C does with building good programs. Or a hammer does wi
As easy to use as a PC (Score:2, Funny)
Thanks Google! (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/06/business/busine
Making web pages (Score:4, Interesting)
Rus
Like it isn't that easy? (Score:2, Insightful)
Its Always Been Easy (Score:5, Interesting)
Putting Paint on Canvas Is Easy... (Score:2)
Check the picture on the story (Score:1)
I suppose it's possible that they got their hands on a prototype IBM PC in 1979.
Re:Check the picture on the story (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Check the picture on the story (Score:1)
Re:Check the picture on the story (Score:2, Informative)
We are not typical (Score:5, Insightful)
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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Re:We are not typical (Score:4, Insightful)
It seems to me that the issue here is the cost justification. For most small shops a web site is very intangible, especially if they don't sell through it. If they do sell from it it then starts to get complicated and expensive (compared to brochureware).
Re:We are not typical (Score:3, Interesting)
My wife manages to cope fine as a finance director, too, but I don't hear people suggesting that everyone should be able to do that without paying a professional.
If these small business people m
College Kids (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:College Kids (Score:2)
It became clear from the rest of your post that you were talking mostly about college design students, but when I read the sentence I've quoted above I thought, "I know what you mean! These computer science/engineering students are taught to program the back-end but never learn how to make a decent web interface."
I know that it's impossible to be
Re:We are not typical (Score:2)
In the real world, when your website brings you those customers, you'd better already HAVE a business they can buy from, or you've just wasted their time and gained their ire.
before anything else (Score:4, Informative)
Why stop at IT (Score:4, Insightful)
Why dont people concentrate their simplifiction efforts on the ABC of the Legal matters, or DIY Surgery or a program that make Accountants redundant.
Re:Why stop at IT (Score:2)
shopping cart
meaningful, useful web stats linked to customer info
email
simple content management
mix and match templates and colours
It's fairly obvious that a small business will want to say what domain name they want, and get up and running with a whole system as quickly as possible with zero fuss and high reliability.
Yes, as we de-skill vario
Re:Why stop at IT (Score:2)
Man, that place made a boatload. not that the above tools are horrible (each has it's place, and
Re:Why stop at IT (Score:2)
Perhaps it's because the geeks would so much rather stay up nights and write a program to do it than meet you in person to provide a valuable consulting service.
Only half kidding.
on the article (Score:3, Interesting)
Interland intends to lower that barrier by offering Web site hosting to small businesses for as little as $23 a month.
Hey, there are many more good hosts which offer hosting for price far lesser than that.
You get what you pay for (Score:2)
Bandwidth gets to be a mofo. The cheaper hosts will eat your profits quickly if you use past their set bandwidth caps. And with customers demanding Amazon-scale pictures of everything, and 10,000 spiders sucking your servers dry every day, that bandwidth goes away fast before your first customer shows up.
My wife's webstore (home grown, and I'm not crass enough to plug it with a link here) has about 70,000 i
Lower your prices... (Score:2)
Then maybe you can compete with stores on the web. I'd gladly shop at a mom and pop B&M if they had even slightly higher prices than stores on the web. But they never do.
The days of sitting back and watching profits pour in by setting your prices way to high and expecting people won't notice... Well, they're still here, but they belong to the megacorps, not the mom and pop shops.
Small stores on the web abound (Score:2)
Re:Lower your prices... (Score:2)
Mom and Pop stores rarely set their prices sky high because they want to reap mega profits. They set those prices in order to make any profit at all. Those goods in their stores come from wholesalers, who give discounts based on volume. The reason an online store can give you the consumer a dirt bottom price is because they recieved the item at a cost that a m&p would hardly
I expect this will be as succcesful (Score:1)
Easy as Windows (Score:3, Funny)
Right click->properties... Add shweet web site.
Isn't content king? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Should Small Shops do it themselves? (Score:1)
I thought creating a site was already easy. (Score:2)
Welcome To Your Doom!! [homestarrunner.com]
One approach: TownPortal (Score:3, Interesting)
We're building the Open Source TownPortal [sourceforge.net] application for just this.
The idea with TownPortal is that a local community (say, town or county) can easily build and maintain their web site.
In addition, the TownPortal will also enable local small businesses, clubs and schools to run their web sites with simple but efficient CMS tools.
By default the sites of these organizations are hosted under the main TownPortal site, but they can also be easily shown under their own domains with their own layout. In this case the operator of the portal would probably provide this as an additional service.
Re:One approach: TownPortal (Score:2)
Is this the right approach? (Score:3, Insightful)
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?
Email is the point (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Is this the right approach? (Score:2)
It can be useful just to have a website with store hours, directions, and contact info.
I know I've looked up web sites just to find the hours a store it open. It's faster than getting out the phone book, looking up the store, calling them and asking how late they are
If you're going to build a website.. (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:If you're going to build a website.. (Score:2)
Consider also the burden you're placing on low-bandwidth, low-power, low-memory wireless devices. A big slow site is a sure way to turn away these customers.
Huh? (Score:2)
Already happened (Score:3, Insightful)
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?
Appearing Dated (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Isn't it already? (Score:2)
But for your simple mom and pop shop anyway, they probably really only _need_ a simple html page to put their menu on or what have you, which let's face it, can be taught to a monkey how to do that in very little ti
I wish (Score:3, Insightful)
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?
Style (Score:2)
I have learned a few tricks - which follow. Even so, nobody (least of all myself) will claim that most of my web pages are pretty - I will claim that the information in them is easy to find and accessible.
The first is to find a simple style that you like, encode it in a style sheet and just use it consistently. Simple is best. You can usually find a reasonable style somewhere in some web page.
Secondly - find someone who does have a sense of style and get them t
Hosting prices still steep... (Score:2)
Easy isn't enough. It has to become a tool. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
An example of the kind of thing he is talking abo (Score:2)
I found this while I was looking around at getting a new hosting service. It has a demo that you can try out - I was quite impressed - a kind of paint-by-numbers website creator...
(I'm not assosciated with these people at all, by the way...)
On the other hand... (Score:2, Insightful)
Just HAVING a web site is not enough. Many small businesses are done a disservice when they are pulled into the modern world, convince
Generating content (Score:2)
Creating sites is easy...... (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Wrong tree (Score:2, Interesting)
Larger problem:
If by Mom & Pop stores we mean small, privately owned retailers with single-digit locations, then the problem presented to them by the internet is that they have to compete with the national chains *at all*. Before, the national chains weren't in their area. Now the area's overlap, and for some Mom & Pop's that's a very bad thing. Before they existed just because they didn't have to compete with the chains, or, more precisely, becau
DEMOCRACY (Score:2)
It soon becomes apparent though that merely creating a space is not enough. It is actually quite limiting communicating within the confines of the web. So personally I think ease of web use is not the be all.
as easy as using a PC? (Score:2)
have YOU ever designed a site for these people? (Score:2, Interesting)
My Interland Experience (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:My Interland Experience ...SUCKS too (Score:3, Insightful)
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 we
Re:Oh dear God, no. (Score:1, Troll)
Re:Oh dear God, no. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Oh dear God, no. (Score:5, Interesting)
In addition to this, some people out there may think that your cute pet is really interesting.
There may be a time when you need some information on say, goldfish juggling, and the guy who knows loads about this was only able to put up his site because of these easy to use tools. Could be great content behind that naf design, but you'd never know if he couldn't publish it.
Re:Oh dear God, no. (Score:1)
Re:Oh dear God, no. (Score:2)
Seriously, you need help.
But try this:
http://home.sprynet.com/~awhit/becker.htm