Mateo sat at his small desk in the back of the shop and he looked at the paper calendar on the wall. It was the and the air in the room felt heavy with the smell of floor wax and old paper.
He needed to change the hours on his website so his customers would not drive across Las Vegas only to find a locked door on Friday morning. He opened the browser and he went to the login page but the password he saved did not work.
He tried three more times and then he sent a polite email to the man who built the site for him two years ago. The reply came back faster than he expected and it said that a change to the store hours was a maintenance task and it would cost seventy-five dollars. The email also said the work would be done by the following Tuesday because the developer was leaving for the holiday.
Mateo stared at the screen and he felt the heat rise in his neck and he realized he was trapped inside his own business. The site would tell the world he was open for business while he was at home with his family and he would eventually pay nearly a hundred dollars for a man to type six words and hit a button. He had paid five thousand dollars for the site and yet he did not own the keys to the front door. This was not a mistake or a technical limitation and it was a business model built on the silence of the client.
The Only Set of Keys
I used to believe that keeping a client away from the code was a form of protection and I told myself it was for their own good. I thought that if they had the power to change things they would break the layout or delete a crucial file and then I would have to spend all night fixing it.
I was wrong about that and I was hiding behind a lie because it made my life easier and it made my bank account larger. I was selling a house but I was keeping the only set of keys in my pocket and I was charging the owner every time they wanted to open a window. It took a long time for me to see that a business owner who cannot update their own holiday hours is not a client but a hostage.
The Phoebus Cartel
I spent most of last night reading about the Phoebus Cartel and the history of lightbulbs because I fell into a hole on the internet and I could not get out. In the early part of the last century the people who made lightbulbs got together in Switzerland and they decided that bulbs lasted too long.
The choice to force a limit of 1,000 hours so that people would have to buy more bulbs.
They called it technical progress but it was just a way to make sure the money never stopped flowing from the pockets of the workers to the vaults of the makers. Software developers do the same thing today when they build a site that requires a developer to change a phone number or an address.
They use complex systems that look impressive but they are really just elaborate cages. They talk about custom code and they talk about proprietary frameworks but often they are just building a meter that runs every time the client breathes.
When you want a
you are looking for a tool that helps you grow and you are not looking for a recurring bill that hits you for every typo.
My friend Noah F.T. is a court sketch artist and he spends his days watching people who are trying to hide the truth. He told me once that the hardest thing to draw is the face of a man who knows he is being cheated but cannot prove it yet.
“
“He sees it in the way they grip the wooden rail of the witness stand and the way their eyes dart to the exit.”
— Noah F.T., Court Sketch Artist
I think of Mateo in his shop in Las Vegas and I see that same grip on the edge of his desk. He is a man who knows how to work hard and he knows how to serve his community but he is being made to feel small by a man with a laptop and a billing app.
A Slow-Motion Car Crash of Ethics
The developer left that bug there on purpose or at least they left the door locked on purpose. They want the seventy-five dollars for the holiday hours and they want the fifty dollars for the price change on the menu and they want the hundred dollars for the new staff photo.
Hostage Model
Milk old clients through complexity and access barriers.
Hammer Model
Build the tool, hand it over, and teach the owner to swing it.
If the site was easy to use then the developer would have to find new clients instead of just milking the old ones. It is a slow-motion car crash of ethics and it happens every single day in the world of web design.
A website should be like a hammer or a truck and it should be a tool that the owner can pick up and use whenever they need it. You do not call the dealership every time you need to adjust the seat in your car and you do not call the carpenter every time you want to hang a picture on the wall.
They build on platforms that are open and they use languages that are clear and they make sure the client has the master password on day one. The team at 717 Design works with Hispanic entrepreneurs who are tired of being told that their own business is too complicated for them to manage.
They build sites that work in two languages and they integrate tools like WhatsApp so the business owner can talk to their customers directly without a middleman. They treat the project like a partnership and not like a long-term debt. They understand that for a small business owner every dollar matters and every hour of the holiday weekend is precious.
The Paper on the Glass
Mateo finally closed his laptop and he went to the front of his store and he taped a piece of white paper to the glass door. He wrote the holiday hours in thick black ink and he felt a little bit of his power return as the ink dried in the dry Nevada air.
It was a simple solution but it was a reminder of what the website was supposed to be. It was supposed to be his voice in the digital world and it was not supposed to be a wall between him and his people. We have to stop accepting the idea that technology is a mystery that requires a high priest to interpret.
Most of the things that business owners need to do on their sites are simple and they should be as easy as sending a text or writing a post on social media. If your developer tells you that changing your hours is a complex task that requires a three-day turnaround then they are not lying about the work but they are lying about why the work is hard.
I think back to the lightbulb cartel and I think about the bulb in Livermore that has been burning for over . It is still light because it was built before the makers decided that profit was more important than purpose.
We can build websites that last and we can build websites that give power back to the people who pay for them. It just requires a designer who is willing to give up the keys and a client who is brave enough to demand them.
The next time you look at your site and you feel that familiar dread of having to ask permission to change a word or a picture you should remember Mateo and his piece of paper. You should remember that you are the owner of the house and the developer is just the person who helped you build the walls.
If they kept the keys then they did not finish the job and they do not deserve another dime of your money until they hand them over.
The holiday hours stay the same while the bank balance changes and the padlock on the site becomes the most expensive part of the house.
