Why is the Internet so complicated?
Why is everything about connecting with your customers on the Internet so unpredictable? Lots of people make websites, but there isn’t a design firm in the world that can guarantee your website will connect with customers the way you want it to. Why do the prices from online vendors vary so incredibly dramatically? Why is the significance of what they do so often obscured?
There are a few answers to that question, but I think the most important answer is that almost every service under the umbrella of of “online business” operates under the “confusopoly” model.
Confusopoly is a term coined by the author of Dilbert to describe a business that purposefully confuses its clients so they don’t know what they’re getting, how long it should take, or what it should it cost, or whether the business did a good job.
Traditional web firms are classic examples of confusopolies.
Why is the Internet so complicated? Good help is hard to find.
Now let’s get one thing straight: The point of this article is not to denigrate web builders and marketers. For one thing, that’s what we do for a living. We know our colleagues and competitors are nice people who try to do good work. In fact, we’ve written about a couple of them on this very blog.
The point is not that web developers are grinning devils, sent to torment and manipulate you. The point instead, is that the current era of marketing is quite unfriendly to businesses because it involves the Internet.
Maybe you haven’t seen that. Maybe you like your current web vendor, or maybe you don’t see the need to have one at all. These are both quite common.
But ask yourself this: Do you know whether your web vendor is helping you find more customers?
Do you know what they’ve done for you in the time they’ve worked for you, and what they do each day? Do you know what another vendor might have done with an equivalent amount of time and money? Do you know if they’re following best practices?
In short, do you know whether they represent a cost-effective solution for sales and marketing?
Probably you don’t know the answer to any of those questions, and that’s why the entire business model is a confusopoly. Businesses don’t understand what their vendors are supposed to be doing or whether they’re doing a good job, and so they have no power. They just have to pick a vendor and hope for the best.
How did we get here?
The obvious question is: How did a huge industry that is so vitally important to every modern company’s relationship with their customers become so hard to work with?
The answer is that it all happened too fast. The Internet went from a gimmick, to an important tool, to the indispensable core of almost all marketing and sales in just a couple years. Mobile devices were the straw that broke the camel’s back. Everyone started walking around with supercomputers and using them for every facet of their daily lives.
Suddenly if you weren’t online, it was like you were invisible.
The only ones who have been able to wrap their head around this change – who have even had the time to do so – are the ones who have made their business selling online services.
The end result: The only ones who understand how to do business online are the vendors, the giant companies, and a few select small business who are completely crushing all of the competition in their way.
In fact, this is rather similar to the situation when personal computers first started appearing in the 1980s. The original PCs were notoriously hard to use by anyone outside of the self-selected enclave that built them. What’s more, they didn’t really want to simplify the discipline so a bunch of newcomers could invade their space.
Until the iMac came out and introduced a user interface that was easy to use, computers belonged to the elect. Once the floodgates opened, the result was prosperity as everyday people began to make creative use of the new simplified machines.
The world of the web is crying out for a similar solution – a way to deliver the Internet back into the hands of everyday people. This will be difficult because, unlike the advent of the personal computer, this won’t be solved by a single piece of technology. The only possible solution must involve a radical reshuffling of the rules of the game.
The answer to the problem
This is going to be disappointing to you readers, but we don’t have an answer. This is one tricky, tangled, knot of a problem and it’s hard to unravel.
Or rather we should say, we don’t have an answer yet. Stay tuned for an interesting development on this site fairly soon. We’re dedicated to cutting this knot, no matter what it takes.
Until then, think about it. Does the picture we’ve painted in this post mesh with your own experience? Business owners, web developers, everyone in this world, we want to hear from you. Why do you think the Internet is so complicated?
Do you find the Internet complicated? Consider hiring Joe’s Web Geeks for web marketing. We’ll make it simple, and we’ll make it work.
