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Buying The Pre-Fab Farm

Since the dawn of apathy, there have been pre-built solutions to everything anyone may need. Ever. There are finished furnishings, complete meals to go delivered through your window in to your running vehicle, Halloween costumes in a bag (see example to the right), pre-fabricated homes, and of course now there are pre-built Websites. For a low* monthly fee, you can create a bland and monotonous site for your fledgling business. (* "low" generally does not include set up fees, domain name and hosting fees, and a minimum length contract).

Oh, and the Good Times don't end there! For the professional on-the-go, a fantastic way to undermine another creative industry is the purchase a classy pre-built logo for your business. Why pay a professional to actually take the time and care to design a custom graphic for your brand when you can simply point and grunt? What does your company's image matter that much anyway, right? You are saving so much money right now by avoiding the hassle of hiring a professional. You might as well make a "Made in China" label your logo and get that out of the way right up front.

Once upon a time people had no choice but to hire a craftsperson for a specialty job. The other option was to learn the trade and do the job yourself. Most people would opt for the first choice given that specialized trades require very specific skillsets. Enterprising individuals may take on any task which is enviable, but often the end product is not quite the optimal result they had envisioned. Such is the conundrum that gave rise to the Website-in-a-box industry.

A profuse amount of business owners are thrifty by nature, and with good reason. Most new companies will fail within a year or two, so the leaders of these ventures are the ones who bear the weight of the risk. Thanks to the advent of the Internet, Websites are the new and easiest way to promote products and services, announce news, connect with customers, and basically do anything the business needs it to do. However, due to the prohibitive cost of creating a complex or highly interactive Website, many owners get very frightened when considering the expenditure of a new site. This is where the vultures come in, much like an abusive ex-boyfriend just waiting for an opportunity to strike and lull the young lass in to a false sense of security and belonging only to transform in to an uncaring sociopath.

A healthy costing TV advertising campaign has lately pushed Intuit.com to the alpha dog status in the pre-built Website world. Like many morally questionable companies out there just trying anything short of prying your money from your hand with a crowbar, there are multiple Intuit companies selling the same exact thing. Homestead.com is one of those. Why is it there? Generally when a business employs this strategy it is to give the appearance the market is flooded with the service and therefore probably a great bargain, but either way they get the business. And Intuit knows exactly how to market their "services." The message is alluring yet so dangerous to an entire young industry. Like the sirens who would flash their genitals and sing beautiful harmonies to innocent and affable young sailors, these "do-it-yourself" companies would just as soon rip out your symbolic throat and feast on your metaphoric entrails.

It is very easily a parallel archetype to the fast food industry. White Castle® is credited with the first chain fast food joint, but we all know the company that seemed to perfect the idea of the limited menu, high volume, low cost, high speed restaurant. That's right, every child's favorite red and yellow dreamscape - McDonald's®. At first, the trendy idea was seen as a novel, brilliant, and fun way to dine out. Over the years and decades, these small locally-owned companies grew in to international mega-corporations with ties to every known industry and nation in the world. Their marketing tactics were at best pedophillic and at worst a complete disregard for the well-being of their own customers. The only persons they were held culpable to were the shareholders and board of directors, who really only care about making more profits.

So occasionally the clown mascot may have paused to reflect on a life marred with murderous greed and indifferent burden placed upon the world. Some say the tears of a clown taste like the happiness of children, but these tears were of a caustic and evil substance. The intentions of the originators were always good, providing a needed service to their loving communities. But always with the case of good ideas come lecherous business persons touting big returns and exponential growth. What they don't tell anyone is how they are going to change the entire perspective and intent of the company. Granted, this does not always happen but that is clearly the exception to the rule.

Which brings us back to our pre-fab lives. When someone tells you that they can solve all your problems, do you instantly believe them or are you generally skeptical? Does it depend on the subject matter? For example, maybe you as the business owner don't know the first thing about taking your company online. You know vaguely about Facebook® from your kids and that many companies have at least a 1-page Website to give visitors contact information. But how to do this you just don't have the slightest clue. Normally you might contact a local company to take care of this for your company, but you flip the TV channel and see a commercial that seems to be talking directly to you! You don't have to know anything? They will take care of everything for you? You can choose your color scheme? You can add your photos easily and quickly? They will throw in a happy ending for free?

Wow, that sounds perfect for you - a technological ignoramus - who needs help in these matters. But to me and many others in the industry this is such a horrible method and an utter waste of your time and money. We realize it is a daunting undertaking, especially the potentially embarrassing step of actually talking to a designer/developer who generally have little patience and even littler social skills. It is unfortunately a necessary procedure to bring your business in to the 1990's and beyond. While you can get a great temporary Website through a pre-fab service, it will not be considered good on any level (unless you have considerable photography or design prowess). To designers these Websites are basically junk cluttering up the Internet, and represent the erosion of the industry which has barely even begun. Most realize with a twinge of horror that this industry born from the Internet Age is on a trajectory of an unknown path and with the considerable computer based skills of the younger generations an early retirement is most likely mandatory. But we set the standards now. We create the cutting edge. Not some boardroom filled with Ivy League elitists who couldn't care less about deprecated tags and new standards.

And don't think for a second that your wonderful web building/ hosting/ etc business will be there with you for the long haul. Take for instance the confusingly named 1oneHost, whose site appears to have been abandoned. Do you think they actually alerted their clients that they wouldn't have any more Web services whatsoever? It doesn't matter how long you have paid them through, their ingenious business model failed miserably or they themselves failed. Either way, all of their clients get to ride that bandwagon in to the ditch with them. Then the clients need to brush themselves off (and write it off), get back up to the road and find another ride ASAP before all their potential customers pass them by.

Sometimes when a model or idea attempts to undercut an entire industry, it backfires and they soon find themselves back at the drawing board to find another way to shortcut to success. However, when an industry is so enormous and untapped, clones and other, more vehement snake-oil salespersons appear on every doorstep. The onslaught is overwhelming and unending. So seems the case with Website design and development which has the potential to change the Internet for the better, but we are fighting a maniacal horde of trespassers unlike anything witnessed before in the business. It's about time we fight back.

   (October 25, 2011)

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