The Reality Gap

The Reality Gap

As web professionals we often get asked for the weird and the wonderful.  I'll give you a recent example of a customer conversation.


Them: 'We'd like a post code based database that can work out mileage between any location in the UK, then give a quote for the milage for our van and delivery service which can then take payment online.'

Us: 'Ok we should meet to discuss your exact requirements, from which we can work out a quotation for you and give you an estimate of how long the work will take.'

Them: 'Ok will you come to us or should we come to you?'

Us: 'We can do both, we've got an office in Llanelli...'

Them: 'Does that make you expensive?'



This conversation says a lot about the enquiries we're getting in this day and age.  To be truthful, it's not the caller's fault it turns out that their budget was a couple of hundred quid whereas for a sophisticated system like that it should really be a couple of thousand at least.  The reason behind this is that post code databases are expensive to buy from the post office/ Royal Mail and the custom coding takes time to put in place.  The bulk of that time is of course taken up in testing.  We have to make sites as hacker proof as possible and that is not an easy thing to do.  Sorry we're not cheap.

Because people have seen cheap software on the web that's been developed professionally for and mass sold for low prices they are increasingly expecting us to provide them anything they want for miniscule amounts.  They dont see that the mass produced software has been developed by a large company that may have spent hundreds of thousands of pounds/dollars to do so and is only profitable at low amounts becuase hundreds of thousands of people buy it, hence the reality gap.

As web designers the onus is on us to explain what is reasonable and what is feasible, sadly by then we've already lost the business, because it wasn't really there in the first place.

www.cptsolutions.biz  and www.nice-site.org

The Internet belongs to the person with the most money!

At CPTsolutions.biz and Nice-Site.org we love our customers and like most progressive web design houses we are always on the lookout for new and innovative ways to help our customers.  There's only so much we can do however, you would be amazed at how many customers actually want us to run their businesses for them.

Yes people look to the web as a way of earning more cash, and of course we advise on web marketing, but you would be amazed at how these conversations spill into conventional non web marketing, then we find that our advice is sought.

A few years back one of our clients was told by their accountant that they needed to earn an extra £700 per week in profit to stay in business.  You can bet that the very next phone call was one of 'we need the website to earn us an extra £700 per week'.

'Ok,' we said, 'What's your marketing budget?'

There lies the rub, the market budget was exactly zero, they didn't even want to pay us for tinkering with their site.  


We tried to help and give good free advice, but the company management didn't want to hear.  The manager just wanted us to ramp up the website so they could earn an extra £700 a week without it costing them anything.  

I'm sure you will agree that this just cant be done.  The internet is no different to any other part of the physical universe you cant get a result without expending energy.  In other words no work, no reward.  Nothing can be acheived without work.  You can work smart or you can work hard or use some endless combination of the two.  The keyword however is work, and work requires time which has to be paid for, hence the need for a marketing budget.

In other posts we will be looking at the type of thing you can do to get a good web position and lots of traffic running through your sites, using techniques that require minimal amounts of consistent work, after all we like hitting the beach just as much as anyone else and even though we are I.T. types we do like having a life.  Watch this space...