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> I'm sorry for people when their web sites are disrupted. I am astonished when it 'kills their business.' One would think that in this day and age one would 'r

> I'm sorry for people when their web sites are disrupted. I am astonished when it 'kills their business.' One would think that in this day and age one would 'restore from the last backup' and move on. Having worked for a hosting company in Australia, I can say that most of the customers who suffer these problems are 1) small business owners and 2) not tech savvy. Most of their sites are pre-packaged e-commerce solutions, and the idea of doing a weekly DB dump + /www tar is just beyond them. They would probably be better off with something like Shopify, but many of them also want local support & like the idea of "DIY". Unfortunately for them, doing it yourself means you're handling all the risks.

ChuckMcM 15y ago
Cool, thanks for the direct perspective. So it does sound like there is perhaps some space for s service which a company could provide which looked to the shop owner as a 'DIY' service but was implemented as setting up various values in standard templates on the back end? Sort of like 'App Engine' for small business where you "design" it but the modules you use are just front ends for the underlying cloud services?
- elithrar 15y ago
  > Cool, thanks for the direct perspective. So it does sound like there is perhaps some space for s service which a company could provide which looked to the shop owner as a 'DIY' service but was implemented as setting up various values in standard templates on the back end? Sort of like 'App Engine' for small business where you "design" it but the modules you use are just front ends for the underlying cloud services? I still think many people "DIY'ing" shouldn't. The sites often look horrible, have no way to track stats (conversions), etc. What would be better is it if the hosted e-commerce players really pushed to market to these people who think DIY'ing is the better way.
  - ChuckMcM 15y ago
    "I still think many people "DIY'ing" shouldn't." Chuckle. Agreed 100% however folks want to be independent, even when they aren't as good at it as they might think they are. From the psychology perspective if you can make a system that "feels" DIY but really isn't so DIY that the final product looks DIY, that is the value proposition in this market. You sell people the notion they can "do it themselves, no need for techno-nerds telling you how you're doing it wrong!" and then you give them a design system on rails for which the 'exit' points are all decent web sites.

ChuckMcM 15y ago

Cool, thanks for the direct perspective. So it does sound like there is perhaps some space for s service which a company could provide which looked to the shop owner as a 'DIY' service but was implemented as setting up various values in standard templates on the back end? Sort of like 'App Engine' for small business where you "design" it but the modules you use are just front ends for the underlying cloud services?

elithrar 15y ago
> Cool, thanks for the direct perspective. So it does sound like there is perhaps some space for s service which a company could provide which looked to the shop owner as a 'DIY' service but was implemented as setting up various values in standard templates on the back end? Sort of like 'App Engine' for small business where you "design" it but the modules you use are just front ends for the underlying cloud services? I still think many people "DIY'ing" shouldn't. The sites often look horrible, have no way to track stats (conversions), etc. What would be better is it if the hosted e-commerce players really pushed to market to these people who think DIY'ing is the better way.
- ChuckMcM 15y ago
  "I still think many people "DIY'ing" shouldn't." Chuckle. Agreed 100% however folks want to be independent, even when they aren't as good at it as they might think they are. From the psychology perspective if you can make a system that "feels" DIY but really isn't so DIY that the final product looks DIY, that is the value proposition in this market. You sell people the notion they can "do it themselves, no need for techno-nerds telling you how you're doing it wrong!" and then you give them a design system on rails for which the 'exit' points are all decent web sites.