May
9
The Internet has a history of taking services that once required a professional and making them accessible to the Do It Yourself (DYI) crowd.
Not that you can expect to end up with the same level of quality you’d expect from a professional. Knowing your way around the likes of, say, desktop publishing, digital music, word processing, and website template applications doesn’t necessarily make you a designer, rock star, author, or web designer. But if you see no difference between your homemade effort and that of a professional, or if you do see a difference but don’t value it enough to pony up, a DYI app might just be the way to go.
Might be. There’s a caveat. Take a DYI website made from a template app. It may please its creator, but pleasing customers is another matter. Customers have grown accustomed to experiencing world-class sites. If a DYI site lacks a certain look, feel, tone, user-friendliness, or je ne sais quoi, it can end up costing you business.
It was inevitable that the DYI trend would make its way into the payments industry. PayPal and others blazed that trail. Now, Swiss company SecurionPay has announced an online payments function designed to work with drag-and-drop website builder Weebly.
Though there is some question as to whether SecurionPay differs substantially from other DYI payment apps, positioning itself as a made-for-Weebly product creates the impression of a Unique Selling Proposition, or USP. Weebly is klutz-proof and easy to use. Devotees may well favor an option designed specifically for it.
Like other DYI applications, SecurionPay has its limits. Right now it’s available only to companies incorporated in Europe. It lacks the breadth of options and resources that major players like Fiserv, my employer, offers. Its niche will likely be smaller companies that don’t need or can’t afford a full suite of services. There are a lot of them out there. As such, SecurionPay and others like it promise to fill a viable niche.