Article by Alan J Burdick

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Why not visit the Saturn bookstore for books on
the internet

I Was Like You Once!

As an Internet designer in the US I would be looked upon as just another guy, some creative Joe sixpack with regular old computer skills and a regular job. As an Internet designer in the UK I am some kind of super-brain, a new breed of technically capable artist whose canvas is the screen of a PC and whose mind is as unfathomable as Einstein's might be to a colony of Gorrillas.

Don't Take This the Wrong Way, But...

While the US steams ahead with their Internet communities, their E-commerce and their computer industries, the UK plods quietly along in the background, struggling with such mind-bending concepts as Email, Windows and how to turn on and turn off a PC without instigating a scan disk. But why is this? Why are we Brits so incapable of coming to terms with what is essentially a simple concept made complex by lack of knowledge?

I am an Internet designer and every day of my life I am coming face to face with bewildered business owners and company directors. What is the Internet? Is the number one question they ask me with expressions like primates presented with cuttlery. 'What is the Internet? Where have you been, Mars?' Is the response I'd love to offer most of the time but, 'take a seat and I'll take you through the basics...' is usually what I actually say. So commences two hours of jargon-free explanations that start encouragingly but soon deteriorates as my student asks, half an hour into my discourse, 'yes, but what exactly is the Internet?' At this point I usually toss a copy of Internet For Idiots in their lap and make my excuses.

Business - Public Enemy Number One

For some time I worked in stocks and shares. My duties every day would be to evaluate significant movements in the stocks of various companies, print out and fax those movements, or sometimes post them, sort out spreadsheets for the following day and laboriously update the company's prehistoric internal system respectively. In the US most of the companies and the individuals who required the faxed or posted figures (often running into 30 pages or more) would have Email. I could Email the details at light speed in the early hours of my day and by lunch time all my duties would be completed. The costs for the shares company would be obliterated - consider the cost of a fifteen minute fax and then compare that to the cost of sending an Email - but the whole concept, in the UK, is unthinkable. 'Send the figures by Email? Are you mad?' The response of both the recipient shareholders and the bigwigs who oversaw my office. 'Isnt it enough we're using PCs and not good old fashioned ledgers, without having to drag the blasted Internet into it?'

'Good-old-fashioned' is a term I have come to loath in my time as a webmaster living in the UK. 'Whatever happened to using the good-old-fashioned postal service?' 'I prefer to use good-old-fashioned pen and paper!' Aaaaaaargh!

The Internet, and particularly Email, can make companies in this country thousands, millions, if only they'd take their heads out of their dusty ledgers, their antiquated inhouse systems and their good-old-fashioned postal service. A large, well known, corporation can draw large numbers of visitors to a website, use those visitors to make money with banner advertising space, bookstore affiliations, promotions, etc. Instead they use the web to announce how great their company is, who the Director currently is - along with a passport photograph of some faceless suit and tie Bill Bloggs smiling inanely - and, perhaps, a contact and customer support form which will sit on the site and never get used by either company or visitor.

An Example Which Will Get Me Sued...

As an example Sun Life, one of the country's leading and most well known insurance businesses, has recently acquired itself a website. Sun Life's name alone guarantees it visitors as soon as the site is up and running. A small investment in advertising to its customers and the public in general would increase that traffic substantially. By associating with an affiliate site Sun Life could make thousands through the Internet in commission alone, many more thousands from utilising banner advertising space. By offering things people can use the website could be a roaring success, Sun Life could become a real online Insurance service gaining new customers through the net every day. What have Sun Life actually got?... An incomprehensible online advert for themselves, and thats it. They advertise their website by placing themselves on search engines and occasionally printing their website URL in as small type as it is possible to imagine in the most obscure locations on promotional material.

Why?

This is just an example and in no way intended to offend Sun Life or its Internet department (which, by the way consists of only one man) But it gives us a telling overview of the UK business sector's attitudes toward the Internet. That is, when it is used the Internet  is used as advertising space, when Email is used it is used as an inhouse messaging service, when being promoted the whole company web presence is toned down, if it is promoted atall.

Pools - Lets Go For a Swim

The Internet and Email are pools of limitless possibility to business in this country. A fax is often illegible and costs as much as the call time, Email is crystal clear, costs virtually nothing in comparison. The post is slow, unreliable, dangerously insecure, Email is fast as lightening, almost infallible and as secure as you want it to be. In the real world businesses must stick to what they know, if they deal in insurance, insurance is what they must stick to. And rightly so. An insurance company that started selling used cars under the same name would have the oddest corporate identity imaginable. But on the Internet these restrictions do not apply. With the amount of affiliation services on offer to high traffic websites the earning possibilities are unthinkably great. An insurance company could quite easily refer visitors to an affiliate bookstore framed by the company identity without endangering the integrity of that identity. A car dealership could quite happily offer visitors fun and games, news, weather, competitions etc. while simultaneously promoting its business shamelessly, drawing in crowds by giving them what they want then selling them what they never realised they needed.

Conclusions R Us

Unfortunately the Internet is to the British business sector as the ocean was to early man, baffling, a little frightening and, all things considered, best left well alone. If you're going to get wet you should stay in shallow water and never shout about the fact that you went for a swim, because your tribe will probably expell you on the grounds that you are bewitched.

Perhaps one day this will change. Something tells me that change is a long way coming. In the meantime I'm seriously considering emigrating to higher ground!

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Alan J Burdick is an Internet designer
living in South East London. He is 27
years old and has a graphic design
background that spans over ten years.
Alan has witheld his email but you can
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to him via our contact page, or you can
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