Buying stuff on the Australian Web isn’t a major problem. Buying services/skills online does seem to be a problem. Very few tradespeople or small businesses appear to be using email or websites in a committed way.

Tig tog .. tables are fine for tabular information!

Yairs, but these nongs hadn’t seemed to realise that you don’t need tables to lay out a sidebar.

So I suppose it’s the general problem with economic changes. Some people invest the time and undergo the unpleasantness of mastering something new. They get the benefits. Others try to grab the benefits without changing their mindsets. They don’ t any benefit and then write it all off as hype.

Even major websites are completely retarded for disabled users, I could name a few, or even in terms of page size / loading speed / coherence of design.

I believe the worst things are the ISPs. Frequently they only want to support flat-HTML on their basic plans which is a nightmare to maintain; at best it’s PHP and maybe mysql. If you’re a small business who wants to do something slightly more advanced (and what about backing the database up?!) it’s often hard to get something done at a reasonable price.

1. Poor integration of virtual marketing forms into business structures.
2. Poor understanding by web designers of ACTUAL customer service practice
3. Poor understanding by small businesses as to what a web site does & what it can potentially do
4. Ridiculously primitive integration of ISP, host roles, design templates & customer functionality
5. Particularly for service providers, open source web programmes which do not require hosting, can be up & running in about an hour. Easy to edit, & their very basic nature prevents the page from being horribly visually cluttered as so many web pages are.

I think FDB has hit the nail on the head. People have websites and then after the initial flush, forget about them. Possibly such businesses have had so few enquiries via their websites in the initial stages, they’ve all but given up on them. In which case they ought to display their phone numbers much more prominently with a RING US message. They’re probably too understaffed and overwhelmed with day to day business operations to find it worthwhile spending much time online.

Just like that other half of the population who cannot for the life of them understand why anyone would read blogs, let alone write blog posts, there will always be people (or for our lifetimes anyway) who simply hate using computers.

NOT checked for rudimentry errors by the business itself.

I have received a call every week or so for the last 6 FUCKING YEARS for this guy Mark who works as a building and infrastructure consultant. I’ve given up emailing them about it, and their website still has the wrong number on the contacts page.

2) Rapacious “Service/Website providers” who seem to specialise in ripping off people who are inexperienced in this area. A common theme is the “I didn’t know we had to pay to change the website later on”…even for such basic things as product/price.
3) Hideously slow websites that are NOT checked for rudimentry errors by the business itself. The number of times I’ve tried looking at some industrial supplies sites to find a phone number and address 2 years out-of-date…after looking through several “splash” pages of graphics.

Unfortunately I think “survival of the fittest” is occurring at the moment. The only thing a business owner can really do is try to find a willing/able IT company and/or grad. student and knowing from the start what they want. Then having that specified in the contract! As for the banks, etc, I haven’t the faintest idea - they don’t generally change anything unless there are $ x 6 involved.
My favourite sites have the products listed, at least a rough price estimate (no I am NOT a bulk account customer!), and an order line (even a comments type box with good follow-up). I note that wineries seem to get it right most of the time, or that just might be me

Thanks!

And yeah Jobby, it’s the banks that are the real source of bollocks.

I’ll email you at your blog with the ref.

I think I know who you mean - 19th centuryish name?

With digital designs we decide what we want from the best in the world, not what Mr. Store Manager picks out. The Long Tail is at our fingertips as we cruise from Korea to Kansas for the design that suits our taste.

Once we find it we email it to the neighborhood CNC shop (we could buy a Mr. Router home model but the shop is conveniently right next to where they print out our clothing and sew it together…) and bring home the pieces for assembly, no delivery van required. The long boat trip from China is a thing of the past as we choose local, sustainable plywood as the medium.

Aussie-made, custom only. And properly customised - totally up to you - shell depth, shell circumference, timber type, laminating method, finish. They make the drums with absolutely nothing fixed to the shell walls - see the site for how this works. They sound sublime, unless you’re after a detuned bottom head; can’t be done with their design.

Anthony - a good mate of mine makes a living from business websites, and setting up secure billing etc. Let me know if you want a ref.

I’m pretty sure you know another friend of mine by the way. Food writer, PR guy, runs the Feast Perth show each year? Name withheld for personal reasons.

“businesses so overwhelmed with demand that they can afford to ignore my custom?”

A considered assumption would be that the businesses you are dealing with are actually overwhelmed by either a lack of systems or inadequate systems in need of review.

Whether they be hard systems (such as having the right tools on hand), soft systems (policies and procedures) or information systems (such as data collection and analysis).

Author Michael E. Gerber has written a number of books based on the theme “The E Myth” that advises small businesses how to mature, not just grow.

An example of “the need to mature, not just grow” was highlighted by my Direct Marketing teacher who pointed out to his students how so many small business people act too busy making sales to collect potentially valuable data on the customer that could result in an ongoing customer relationship.

I’m particularly interested in the concept of “systems development”, not only because in provides insight into how to mature a small business but also because it probably does offer insight into the building of a career, whether you go into business for yourself or not.

Go into any big corporation and you’ll no doubt have full-time systems analysts employed there.

…From Justin

My joint (very small group) set up a shopping cart, did the back-end programming, hooked up the right databases, etc. (all based on open source of course, tested everything thoroughly and sorted any bugs out … then immediately ran into a world of pain dealing with the financial bollocks from every bank and credit union we talked to.

-existing ISP offers package that runs into the thousands.

-have an Online Payment Facilitator suggested to us. Great help and very reasonable
-decide to switch over to the Bendigo Bank while we’re at it.

-find out the OPF can’t work with Bendigo.

-try Commonwealth and after a few days of trying to get in touch with somone who knows what’s going on and the usual komedy kapers of being told to speak to the person you just spoke to only to find out that we can’t get a facility because “we haven’t had a year long relationship with the bank.”

-decide to stick with Westpac , who were actually pretty helpful but have told us that our URL needs to be the same as our trading name.

I’m sure all of this can be resolved but I can see why more than a few businesses wouldn’t bother with this amount of headbanging.

I’ve had a pretty good run with email - caterers, academic regalia hirers, custom drumkit manufacturers, studio audio gear retailers - in the last couple of months. Prior to that a bunch of just what you’re talking about.

I’m trying to organise builders/contractors to rig up a big home studio/rehearsal space (soundproofing, baffling, etc.) and had absolutely no luck using teh intertoobs at all. I found all the actual information about the engineering principles involved, materials, etc. But I just couldn’t contact a business to do the job. So in the end I trawled around the stores that sold the sound isolation gear and asked for references and now I’ve got a stack of contacts.

Which got me to thinking that (a) my assumption that I should be able to source everything via a laptop was probably naive - though based on the fact that I do damn near everythign else this way; and (b) there are businesses that just don’t seem geared to electronic communication and could make an absolute packet by marketing themselves better this way.

PS - what custom drumkit manufacterer? I’m drooling over this one. I just love the DW site that lets you build custom kits.