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Have a fucking website

otherstrangeness.com

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Re: Have a fucking website

#401

Post by mdp »

rglover wrote: post #360

If people wanted to have a website, they would. The truth of it all is that most people like the walled garden, the sandbox, etc. It's predictable, it's knowable with limited effort, and it creates the desired illusion for a nominal fee. There is no revolution to be had, the people have made (and are continuing to make) their choice. This is technology at scale, for better or worse.

Perfect example is my local coffee shop that is 100% on Instagram only.

They've done amazingly well on just Instagram with the groups they are targeting. I doubt that a website would have any impact on their business. In fact Instagram gives them something much easier, more visual, and with a built in social feed (no need to setup a mailing list, just use Instagram).

"But it's a walled garden..." - Most people don't really care. And also, it's a coffee shop. If Instagram shutdown, they'd be on the next platform in a week and rebuilding the same following.

It's annoying to people like me, but don't see it changing anytime soon, and I can't really blame the business.

Re: Have a fucking website

#402

Post by Apocryphon »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #369
Apocryphon wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically, this kind of performative outrage (over a performative thing or not) is also very Gen X or millennial-coded. I can’t even. Take a chill pill.

> is also very Gen X or millennial-coded. I can’t even. irony, much?

Don’t have a cow, man

Re: Have a fucking website

#403

Post by d-us-vb »

threatofrain wrote: post #388
ehnto wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I often turn to the saying "Rich people don't talk to robots". Time poor people want things done for them not by them. The agency of action needs to be delegated. Just because Flight Centre can automatically line up your flights for you, doesn't mean they want to. Time poor people still don't have time to go through that nor do they want to. They ask their assistant to do it, their assistant knows them well and fills…

Why can’t people just ask for simpler, less custom, prebuilt websites? If you want a custom app then you can always create spaghetti logic, but does a restaurant or small accounting firm really need that?

Instructions unclear: my website is now advertising the logic of spaghetti for an Italian restaurant.

Re: Have a fucking website

#404

Post by chihuahua »

I-M-S wrote: post #313
lleu wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I specifically tracked this problem and built https://lleu.site to try and get businesses in my city off of social media. Built a menu editor. Has a built in blog and image galleries. Events calendar and event posts. Has a single page simple mode and multi page editor. Contact form with message intake and forwarding. Easy UI that I don’t change underfoot every quarter so its consistent. Works on mobile and low powere…

IMO the four designs that I saw as examples are not attractive enough. Especially coming from the editor's builder, they should make a stronger showcase.

The examples look fine to me.

Potential customers want to see the menu (or product range or similar), location, a couple of pictures. It's supposed to give useful and necessary information. The intended purpose is:

Before: your cafe does not have a website.

After: your cafe has a simple website where people can see the menu, hours, and location.

This tool accomplishes that, and looks fine.

It's not supposed to give the viewer an aesthetic experience so novel and surprising, subverting the entire paradigm of cafe menus, to leave the viewer questioning reality and rethinking their entire approach to life.

Re: Have a fucking website

#405

Post by TeMPOraL »

skybrian wrote: post #387
TeMPOraL wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Oh sure, all the web searches and ads are targeted in a way that you're going to end up at the same place a travel agent would have put you, but you can perceive the freedom of choice along the way! And you can enjoy all the risk and liability for mistakes made along the way, too, which is where the actual optimization happened in the economy.

What did travel agents do when they made a mistake? I don’t think they reimbursed people?

They were in a position to notice and correct most mistakes near-immediately, or at least shortly after making it. For most other cases, apologies and/or reimbursements backed by insurance if needed, transparent to the customer. In self-service, all that is responsibility of the user, but it's all built on requests to third parties, so the user is not in a position to unilaterally fix a bad request.

Re: Have a fucking website

#406

Post by 20shampoo »

bigfishrunning wrote: post #373
lotsofpulp wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Referring to a person rich enough to buy human labor as “time poor” is interesting because poorer people working 12+ hour shifts who don’t get paid time off or holidays would consider themselves “time poor”.

Sure, poorer people are also very busy, but i think the GP poster is using "time poor" to refer to people for whom time is their most scarce resource. When i was a kid, i couldn't afford to buy all of the toys and games i wanted to, but i had plenty of time with the toys and games i did have. Now as an adult i can afford to buy whatever i want (within reason), but life gets in the way of me enjoying those things. I t…

When you purchase something from a company you are buying the commodity not the labor used in its making. A commodity has many costs wrapped into it, including labor. The profit a commodity brings to a company doesn't have a 1-1 relationship with the wage of a laborer, so a consumer buying a coffee isn't buying the labor of someone else, they are buying a product. "Buying human labor" means you are an employer paying a wage or rate. Generally employers are people or entities that have accumulated wealth through profit. It's fair to say these people skew towards wealthy, hardly a silly statement at all.

Re: Have a fucking website

#407

Post by joe_mamba »

threatofrain wrote: post #388
ehnto wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I often turn to the saying "Rich people don't talk to robots". Time poor people want things done for them not by them. The agency of action needs to be delegated. Just because Flight Centre can automatically line up your flights for you, doesn't mean they want to. Time poor people still don't have time to go through that nor do they want to. They ask their assistant to do it, their assistant knows them well and fills…

Why can’t people just ask for simpler, less custom, prebuilt websites? If you want a custom app then you can always create spaghetti logic, but does a restaurant or small accounting firm really need that?

>but does a restaurant or small accounting firm really need that?

Where I live in my part of Europe, most small restaurants, cafes, bakeries etc. only use a Facebook page and their Google maps entry to share their menu, phone number and interact with the customer base. They have no use to spend time and money owning and maintain a website, plus the advantage of even grandmas knowing how to update a Facebook page versus stuff like shopify or squarespace.

Re: Have a fucking website

#408

Post by TeMPOraL »

whatever1 wrote: post #364
TeMPOraL wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Oh sure, all the web searches and ads are targeted in a way that you're going to end up at the same place a travel agent would have put you, but you can perceive the freedom of choice along the way! And you can enjoy all the risk and liability for mistakes made along the way, too, which is where the actual optimization happened in the economy.

Similar example in the grocery stores with the self checkout. In the past if the employee did a scanning mistake, worst case the manager / customer would be mad. Now that you do it yourself if you mis scan organic tomatoes as regular tomatoes you are freaking going to jail. Ok exaggerating a bit, but having shoplifting in your record can be life changing, specially for immigrants

Well, even without exaggeration - if the employee made a scanning mistake, most of the time they (or the customer) would notice during or immediately afterwards, so the employee would just hit undo or scan a negative or such, and carry on.

No such privilege is granted to regular customers. Instead, the self-checkout station locks itself up, and the customer has to wait several minutes for the assigned employee (who, most of the time, is also working two other tasks at the store) to show up, analyze the situation, enter service mode, and do the undo steps.

Re: Have a fucking website

#409

Post by threetonesun »

skybrian wrote: post #387
TeMPOraL wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Oh sure, all the web searches and ads are targeted in a way that you're going to end up at the same place a travel agent would have put you, but you can perceive the freedom of choice along the way! And you can enjoy all the risk and liability for mistakes made along the way, too, which is where the actual optimization happened in the economy.

What did travel agents do when they made a mistake? I don’t think they reimbursed people?

There's multiple levels missing when you do it yourself. Usually they would do their best to sort things out. At the very least it was a single call to deal with the issue to someone who knew how to rebook flights, find new hotels, whatever, not you struggling to figure things out on your phone. For a full mistake, yes, they'd usually reimburse you, if not there are regulations around refunds and things like small claims court.

Doing it yourself? Good luck! Hope you've got good service on your phone where ever you happen to be when things go wrong.

Re: Have a fucking website

#410

Post by alexpotato »

I mentor a couple folks that are either in college or just graduated.

They ask how to "get their name out there" in industries or domains where they either don't have a lot of experience or want to grow their career.

My first response is always: "Do you use social media? and do your socials point back to a blog or website showing your work?"

THEIR response is almost always "social media is toxic!"

To which I reply: "Some of social media is toxic. However, there are a LOT of smart folks online and the lifetime value of going from zero to even a single post about what you are into is enormous. This is especially true if what you put out there is niche and also highlights your value to the right people."

It's actually kind of sad that the needle against social media/websites has gone so far that the positives are being ignored by the younger generation.

Especially so as many people of my generation (Late Gen X/Early Millenials) have stories about how social media helped them get a job, make a great contact or join some group that benefited their life that they wouldn't have been a part of otherwise etc

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