Website Democracy

So I was browsing the web, looking at some thought provoking videos, and I came across the site <a href=”http://jottit.com”>jottit.com</a>. I initially found the concept really interesting. The site is created to give people a website that is as easy to use as blog software; you just type some text and with simple controls you have a website. This got me thinking about Intuit’s new product that allows small business owners to create their own websites for $100. Easy websites for the small business to have their own control their web presence. No longer must they rely on a “web guy” or an agency. They have the power to create their own online presence, it would seem to be that the era of distributed control of online presence is here.

In the case of Jottit, I think it’s a really cool idea but in a sea of media, who wants to say their website is a lowly document. There are 2 strong functions of a website 1 is promotion be it company or product, 2 is lead generation and 3 is findability. Lets face it, websites are just advertisements in a new medium; not to be confused with applications. The promotion aspect of it is created from color, image, and content. Each area has it’s own landmines to be navigated to be successful. Lead generation is all about providing content that is useful or expected by the user. This is no small task that involves diligence and analysis of all of the components. The same, and probably more, can be said for the challenges around findabiliy. So I almost feel that Jottit in a way misrepresents what it is actually giving to people.

With Intuit, they are deliberately setting small business’s up for failure. I mean, at least Jottit is free. Intuit sites are templates and provide more complex sites that could better suit the actual need of the business. But still provides a landscape with plenty of opportunity to miss the mark. What they depend on is not helping the small business owner, but that the small business owner can sign up for a 5 dollar a month hit for hosting. The 5 dollar hit goes un-noticed for a while and before you know it 10,000 small business have paid 5 bucks for something where the perceived usefulness of the site is worth the next to nothing price.

At the end of the day just having a website is not useful. What makes it useful is its ability to provide in a clear manor what the user is looking for and providing the ability for that user to contact the business. So the usefulness is not just having a site, it is having a site that accomplishes the business goal. Which I think is better left to the professional.

So on one hand, yes giving small business owners the tools to easily create the site they want to is a well intentioned idea. On the other hand, it’s probably not going to accomplish what they need it to because they aren’t familiar with what to do to make a site perform for the business. These business owners say that they want a website, what they need is new business. New business from a website is better left to the professionals.