We purchase a service or product. When we do, we know that related company is responsible of paid or unpaid supports like valid expiring date, connection offerings for support services, spare part and repair guarantee, consumer rights and many others that will help us to solve the issue. What if we purchase a website, -service or product?

First 2 posts, while I'm mentioning new TTK and its impact on websites, I also share opinions about corporate/company websites and than repeat the expression that I’ll keep saying in any platform, “There is a market but no sector.” Now lets step back to see the whole picture.

What aspect can we add in terms of website creating and sustaining if internet is considered with different views as “everyone’s internet, internet to everyone, internet for everyone, home internet, family internet, national internet, quota internet, unlimited quota internet, free internet, ID internet, official internet, internet as a technology, internet for games, social internet, adult internet, dangerous internet, religious internet, internet as a communication channel, commercial internet, information internet”?

What do we call as internet anyway?

In fact, website that we call service/product, is consisted of many layers, components and processes. Let’s define a flow:

• Content creation processes
• Design processes
• Implementation and Revisions
• Presentation and Acceptance
• Publishing
• Maintenance and Continuity
• New change requests and changes
• Re-maintenance and Continuity + Updates ...

Each of those titles have also their subtitles in detail but they’re not the main issue now. Beside, electronic, mechanic, engineering, marketing, sale and investment were not even mentioned in this broad flow. When process is completed after it passes through the most complex steps, it is finally turned into a ‘simple’ web page, then we call the reality of this innumerable and ever-increasing web page’s indefinite total as: ‘internet’.

Deadlock of Solutions

In order to create and manage a website, so many independent tools, information, connection, source, location, budget and qualified people are needed; whats more, -mandatorily- most of the solutions dated from 15-20 years ago, ancient times of Internet, unfortunately. A lot of content management systems are trying to solve the issue but wide part of the old solutions are fatefully necessary as well as they become a part as it makes the system slower (e.g, overdone promises about hosting like unlimited hosting) and sometimes makes system stop (expired domains): Domain management, hosting, e-mail settings, dns settings, design changes, update crisis etc.

Management of similar countless issues makes the continuity more difficult than expected and even makes it unsolvable in a short while. Heritages of archaic web days that are lots of applications, rules, habitats and insufficient information which becomes wrong in a time, turn into a trash dump that block the work flows up.

A case
Think about a fictional web agency: As well as numbers are fictional, logical structure is relevant. What important is will be the 2nd year expenses and revenues therefore, everyone can evaluate the customer and turnover numbers as they see suitable for themselves but the scissor between them is important.

Lets assume we have first 10 website customers in first 3 months and we have 38 customers by the end of the year. Averagely 5.000$, in total about 200.000$ turnover (optimistic assumptions) in the first year. If we assume costs are the half of the total turnover (without tax), it looks profit is 100.000$. However, in the 2nd year, the maximum fee that we can have from the customer would be averagely 750$, totally 30.000$. Because in the 1st year there were budgets for meetings, planning, design, developing websites or programming, etc. and customer had a desire to spend money but, there were no any of them in 2nd year.

Therefore, we start the 2nd year with 170.000$ turnover deficit, and after a while everything got out of hand. We overload to operation with new customers, when we’re in the 2nd year, we see that customer requests gathered, costs increased, problems grow up one by one, unsatisfied customers, unhappy companies, everything was stucked. It continues like that. The progress is like that generally, there were some web agencies that got rid of the disaster however, those companies’ customers are not increasing, they trying to get more expensive works. They leave their old customers, they are trying to differ from the companies which enter the market fast and aggressive and, the companies that claim they are doing same work for the same amount of money.

Best domain is the domain has not been taken.
If we see the best domains in the world are pawn in the domain parking companies, severity of the situation and its another dimension -domain tracking system, its clarity and usability- will make sense. Every internet user has already lost at least one domain name. First sectoral, then industry issue: Sustainability.

If it was clear until now, I may continue as; In this case, there is a big bother ahead of us that we; can define from different points, crash in the end, and can’t runaway wherever we go: Continuity. Its meaning as a question in real life: Will a web agency able to create 347 websites to its 83 customers in a year? Which is more critical, can it sustain this service for years?

Simple truths are the sum of complex reality

Here is the crucial question?: How can a website become a product/service? If there is no solution, its fatal. It is reported that there are 550 million websites but Alexa just track first hundred thousands, and cares first ten thousands. What would you think If I say we have built 550million bridges, but just hundred thousands of them are indestructible, ten thousands of them are reliable in fact and just thousands are convenient?

As its seen, we can discuss it from different perspectives but at every turn, we are coming to the point of: Sustainability and how to fill the gap of it. It does not make sense to reality that we can never change: Content is the King and will stay like that. As a matter of fact, Internet is content.