Perils of Using Other Websites to Create a New One!

This may sound mighty strange, but practically every week we get a client who wants us to imitate or copy a website. Usually they are pretty ambitious ones such as AirBnB, Booking.com, Amazon, or even Uber App.

There are serious flaws with this approach as it is extremely perilous and fraught with costly consequences. Copyrights is least of your problems! So here we are setting out why we do not accept a “Reference Website” as the basis of a project or contract.

Copyrights

This is not a surprise to many people but in case anyone is in any doubt, you cannot copy someone else’s design.

If you buy a WordPress Theme, or off-the-shelf template for Joomla or static HTML template, then you are likely to create a website that is very similar to someone else, but that is the only time you get away with it due to the inherent licensing of themes and templates.

Other than that, you could be in serious trouble and the original website owners can insist you change your design. They will not have to take you to court, as most reputable hosting companies will remove any content or design that is in breach of copyrights upon proof of a claim. So don’t rely on the lengthy law suit to protect you from taking immediate action!

Functionality

As a visitor to a website, most of our interactions are limited to the visible front-end. However, processes that make the website work smoothly and provide a unique Customer Experience will be hidden.

Let’s take one of the Top 10 requests for copying a website, namely AirBnB. Many people know how to make a reservation on AirBnB, and some know how to list a property. That is the easy part, as there are 1000s of websites that do the same, but what makes AirBnB unique is the Customer Experience for both guests and hosts.

Some examples include:

• Rate setting process
• Discount setting process
• Booking Conditions settings
• Help-Desk and interaction, with guests and hosts
• Community Knowledge Base enabling to search and find answers from other guests or hosts
• Bank payment system that allows AirBnB to process payments including to take deposit, store credit card numbers, pass on payment to the hosts, and refund the damage deposit to guests. etc.
• Algorithms that qualifies hosts for Superhosts
• Review process
• Verification of Guests and Hosts
• Alias email accounts that hide the guests or hosts real emails, so AirBnB can keep track of all the conversations on the platform
• Tax reporting system (ah yes they do that now!)
• Licence verification process in countries that operate licensing (yes they do that too!)

These are hidden from visitors and you will only ever see them if you are a host or a guest. To get the full experience of these, you need to have had a long and established relationship, both as a guests and a host. To fully appreciate the system you need to have experienced every variation and combination of these instances. Just visiting their website does not give you the full picture.

So no amount of reference website is going to replace the need to sit down and define your needs, processes, etc. By all means, go to these websites and try them out, get some ideas of how they work, but don’t expect your developer to do it or try to second guess it.

Finance

Companies such as AirBnB, Uber, Amazon, etc. have spent millions (some in fact billions) of dollars to get their systems right, and they continue to spend eye-watering amount of money on maintenance and enhancements to their website and apps.

Between 2016 and 2017 AirBnB raised a total of $61B. The kind of budget us mere mortals can muster is not going to cut it, and as a result will never match their functionality and market reach (they spend millions on marketing as well as platform development).

So when specifying a website, you need to be realistic about your financial resources and what you can realistically afford.

Technical Resources

Small start up company with no technical people onboard need to recognise that they are not Mark Zuckerberg and co, starting up Facebook from scratch. They developed the concept, wrote their own code, and grew the capabilities and functionality by constant refining and enhancements. Facebook is estimated to have 60 million lines of code (and growing), so just consider how much that costs and how many technical people you need.

Small or even medium size companies, without the necessary in-house technical skills will find the costs crippling, as they find they have to constantly refine the website or the app, respond to customer requests for new features, and keep up with the competition.

Replicating AirBnB, Facebook, or Uber, etc. requires not only deep pockets, but also extensive technical knowledge in-house, which you can supplement with external contractors. It does not work the other way around, as the costs will be prohibitive.

Conclusion

Using a website as a conceptual reference point is great, but attempting to replicate it without fully understanding the front-end and back-end functionality and processes, is an impossible task and frankly naïve.

Be realistic about your financial and technical resources. You cannot go to the moon, for a price of a bus ticket, so temper your expectations. The only realistic way of creating a website is to write a Requirements and Technical brief (see our articles on this), or contact us so that we can help you through the journey.