Bring On the Noise (it’s coming anyway...)
The hype is back! Once again, technology and politics are heating up. The US is gearing up for what is certain to be a spirited presidential election 2012 and, depending on who you ask, the tech sector is bubbling (or blubbling?) up again as well. What’s the connection between the two trends? It’s all about the small business owner.
The best hype is built around a kernel of truth, but at Webmium we tend to think that on Main Street the actual business owners are focused on the day-to-day and solutions that help them get their work done. Bring On the Noise As is the style of the times, the trends are framed as stark, apocalyptic false choices. A politician’s idiosyncratic policy details are either desperately needed solutions for starving families or job killing nightmare scenarios. Groupon is either a multi-billion dollar behemoth or a fad for cheapskates where businesses to lose the customers they have in hopes of gaining the customers they want.
Where is the small business owner in all of this? We believe they’re not as involved as everyone thinks, because, well, they have work to do.Stuff To Do At Webmium we tend to think that people love to talk about small business owner’s far more than small business owners care to be talked about. Regardless of the very real fact that Groupon is enjoying very real success and the economy is a very reasonable centerpiece for political discourse, we think small business owners aren’t keeping tight tabs on the trends. They have (better?) stuff to do.
Still Offline Case in point: a great portion of small businesses still don’t even have a website. Depending the survey, industry, and source this number ranges from 40-60%. How local can Google and Groupon go when, depending on who you ask, a sizeable minority or a majority of small businesses are still offline?
This fact is clear, but the forces behind it are not. Business owners are by their nature the more practical, outgoing, and bottom line driven portion of the population. If anyone should see the value and opportunity in a website, it would be them.
Of course, professional web developers are expensive and time consuming. Even if you entice your underage but technically talented cousin to design your website in exchange for a few cases of Milwaukee’s Best, you’re still going to need to find time in his World of Warcraft schedule and renegotiate another illegal straw purchase whenever you want an update.
Cost is hardly a barrier any more though, because there are plenty of low cost software solutions for users without technical skills. This of course includes services like our own, Webmium, which offers a full solution for a fraction of the cost of a monthly cell phone bill.
The market has provided plenty of choices for a clear need… so why are so many small businesses still offline?
Cracking the Code Speaking as professional marketer, it’s dangerous if not downright disingenuous to generalize small business owners. Small businesses are the crux example of a fragmented market, a collection of unique and disparate individuals all over the world. The market is as notoriously difficult to capture as it is to characterize.
So at Webmium we’re big fan of Occam. We believe the noise has outpaced the notice and available website creation solutions aren’t cutting it because they don’t reflect the focus of small business owners on simply getting the job done.
This fall, Webmium will be unveiling our website creation solution, which we hope will deliver on this promise. Our release is only a few months away so we hope you’ll keep tabs on us and see if this is a promise that we can deliver.
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