“So Many Clicks”: Building a Website Was Easier Than Building Ownership

Author: Avalanche

Group Photo of CLOW with the Government of Jagna

After demonstrating the process twice, I asked the owner of the Canjulao League of Women (CLOW) to try it herself. To update the business’s menu in Wix, she had to right-click, select “Manage Menu,” enter the editing controls, and change the relevant information. She frowned at the screen and became quiet. “So many clicks clicks clicks,” she said. “Do you think I can remember all this?” Her question accurately described how demanding our “simple” solution felt to its intended user.

At first, I heard her question as resistance. I had patiently started with the most basic computer skills, including the difference between a left-click and a right-click. From my perspective, the instructions were logical: if she wanted to change the menu, she only needed to follow a sequence of steps. Her hesitation seemed to confirm a frustration that had been growing throughout our placement. We kept offering possible improvements, while she often appeared reluctant to move beyond what was already familiar.

CLOW is a government-supported enterprise that creates employment for local women by producing handmade banana chips and tableya chocolate. Its customers are mainly organizations that order in bulk, supplemented by retail sales at expos. After interviewing the owner, my business partner and I identified several obstacles: limited promotion, high transportation costs, manual bookkeeping, a narrow product range, and seasonal sales. We approached these problems with a familiar business mindset. Find an inefficiency, propose a solution, and implement it.

CLOW at CACAO Expo with Department of Agriculture

Promotion initially looked like the clearest opportunity. Several competitors we examined had websites, while CLOW did not have a functioning one. Its Facebook page had not been updated since February 22, and the business depended heavily on repeat customers. When I first suggested Instagram and TikTok, the owner rejected the idea, explaining that Facebook was more widely used in the Philippines. We instead offered to build a website without charging CLOW and to help produce social-media content. Her immediate happiness made the solution appear obvious.

Other proposals met firmer resistance. We suggested investigating third-party delivery because CLOW currently transports products using passenger buses, but the owner worried that the chocolate might melt or break. Her concern reflected operational knowledge we lacked about local handling and heat. We also offered to create an Excel bookkeeping template, proposed additional flavors, and discussed supplying tableya to businesses such as ice-cream shops to reduce seasonality. Product diversification, she explained, required equipment and capital that CLOW did not possess. These conversations still left me frustrated. My private conclusion was harsh: perhaps the central problem was not a shortage of ideas, but comfort with the status quo and an unwillingness to act.

The website lesson seemed to support that judgment, but what happened next complicated it. The owner did take the mouse and attempt the task. After several practices, she succeeded. She could follow the sequence, although independent retention remained uncertain. Nevertheless, she had tried. Her success forced me to separate three different problems that I had treated as one: inability, unfamiliarity, and unwillingness.

A website can be financially free while remaining expensive in other ways. Every action that felt automatic to me represented a new decision for her. Right-clicking, identifying the correct menu, navigating an unfamiliar interface, and understanding what could safely be changed were separate skills. We had calculated what it would cost us to build the website, but not what it would cost her to learn, maintain, and trust it. CLOW had considered creating a website before, but the cost prevented it from proceeding. By removing that financial barrier, we had solved only the first obstacle; sustainable use still depended on knowledge and maintenance.

Recognizing these constraints did not remove CLOW’s responsibility for maintaining the tools, but it changed how I understood that responsibility. Dependence on repeat customers and inconsistent promotion still limit its ability to reach new buyers. A sustainable digital presence will require the owner either to practice unfamiliar tasks or to delegate them. The business needs a workable routine now. I continue to believe that reluctance is part of the problem. I no longer believe that it explains everything.

One later conversation changed my interpretation further. After initially rejecting Instagram and TikTok, the owner raised them again herself. She had discovered that competitors were using both platforms and now wanted CLOW to consider them. The change suggested that she was not permanently opposed to new technology. She may have needed evidence from businesses she considered comparable before accepting our recommendation. We had presented social media as an obviously better tool; the competitors made its relevance visible.

Our own proposals also deserved more scrutiny. We had not collected quotations from delivery providers or tested packaging under actual transport conditions. We had not calculated the investment and demand for new flavors. Her responses suggested that CLOW’s immediate priority was not aggressive expansion but survival and stable employment under severe capital constraints. I realized we were asking her to accept ideas we had not yet tested. That does not make the ideas wrong, but it makes certainty about them unearned. It also explains why we narrowed our remaining work to tools that could support continuity: the website, promotional content, and automated bookkeeping.

This experience also changed what I understood consulting to require. I had assumed that a consultant’s value came from identifying opportunities that people inside a business had overlooked. Yet identifying a weakness from outside was easier than designing a change that matched the client’s priorities, existing skills, and capacity for continued maintenance. CLOW did not need the greatest possible number of recommendations. It needed a small system that it could realistically sustain. During our remaining week, our responsibility was therefore to narrow the scope, listen more carefully, and test whether the tools could survive our departure. Moving from proposing solutions to testing ownership became the most practical lesson of my placement.

With one week remaining, our priority should not be adding more features. It should be testing whether CLOW can own the essential ones. We can reduce website management to a small number of recurring tasks, create a visual guide using screenshots from the actual computer, and record short demonstrations that can be replayed. Instead of demonstrating repeatedly, we should use a teach-back approach: ask the owner to perform a genuine update without prompts, then repeat the test after several days. We should also agree on one realistic posting routine rather than creating several inactive accounts, and test the bookkeeping template using actual transactions before handing it over.

I arrived believing that CLOW’s missing website was a technical gap. Building the site was the easy part. The harder question is whether the organization can continue using it when we are gone. Service is not proven by the number of recommendations we deliver or the sophistication of the tool we leave behind. It is proven when the people receiving that tool can question it, adapt it, and eventually operate it without us. We can donate a website. We cannot donate ownership of change.