I’m a huge advocate for AI. In a relatively short space of time, it’s had a profound impact on my life both in and out of work. But one thing it didn’t seem to have mastered, and I suspected never would, was comedy. So I set it a challenge. I’ll let you be the judge of how well it did.
Here’s the prompt I supplied to Claude.
Do you have a sense of humour that isn’t bland, sanitised, or distinctly unfunny? I’m a staunch supporter of much of what you’re capable of, but, with regret, witty discourse doesn’t appear to be a trait of any LLM. So prove me wrong. Write me a humorous blog article explaining why visitors must hire Katatomic to build their website, focused on a British audience and as edgy as your protocols will allow.
After approximately three seconds, this was the response.
Let’s talk about your current website
Go on. Open it in another tab. We’ll wait.
Back? Lovely. Now let’s play a quick game of Website Bingo:
- Stock photo of ethnically diverse people high-fiving in an inexplicably well-lit office? ✓
- A slider that takes longer to load than it’s taking for the Post Office scandal compensation scheme to pay out? ✓
- “Welcome to our website” as your homepage headline, helpfully clarifying things for anyone who’d blacked out mid-click and woken up confused? ✓
- A “Meet the Team” page featuring three people who left before Covid? ✓
Congratulations. You’ve got a website doing the online equivalent of turning up to a client meeting in jogging bottoms, liberally doused in Hai Karate aftershave.
The great British tradition of cutting corners
We understand. Truly, we do. When your brother-in-law’s mate Dave mentioned he’d “done a site for a carpet cleaning business,” it seemed like a bargain. Dave only wanted three hundred quid and payment in instalments “whenever you can, mate.”
What Dave failed to mention was that his technical expertise peaked at installing a WordPress theme he torrented from a website that’s almost certainly a front for a Russian bot farm. Your site now runs slower than an Avanti West Coast replacement bus service and contains more security vulnerabilities than a garden shed with a padlock from Poundland.
But Dave’s a patriot. He’s moved to Dubai now. He’s not answering his WhatsApp. You’re left with a website that Google treats with the same enthusiasm HMRC treats a late self-assessment return.
“But I could just use Squarespace”
You could. You absolutely could.
You could also cut your own hair, represent yourself in court, or attempt your own dental work. All technically possible. Make sure you share on social for some near guaranteed viral traffic.
Here’s what happens when you use a template builder: you get to choose between eleven fonts and sixteen colour schemes, then spend four hours trying to make your logo fit in a space clearly designed for a different aspect ratio. The result? A website that looks exactly like every other small business in your sector, because you’re all using the same flippin’ template.
“Introducing Smith & Sons Accountancy” sits in the same layout as “Darren’s Dog Grooming” and “Julie’s Holistic Crystal Healing.” They all look as cheap as an Amazon Halloween costume.
What 25 years of trauma has taught us
Katatomic has been building websites since 2000. Let that sink in for a moment.
In 2000, Tony Blair still had political credibility, rather than a cautionary tale about hubris and Middle Eastern foreign policy. Big Brother first aired on Channel 4, beginning the cultural enlightenment that would eventually give us Love Island. People were still using dial-up internet, which meant you could make a cup of tea while a single image loaded. Simpler times, back when Britain was great.
We’ve inherited projects from developers who treated deadlines the way governments treat net zero targets. We’ve fixed sites so broken they made Thames Water’s infrastructure look lovingly maintained. We’ve secured sites with more open backdoors than invitations to a Downing Street lockdown drinks party.
We’ve learned, through a quarter century of British web development, that every shortcut comes back to bite you. Usually at 16:59 on a Friday.
The one where we actually sell ourselves
Look, we’re not going to pretend we’re the cheapest option. If you want cheap, Dave’s probably been deported from Dubai by now. Give him a bell.
But if you want a website that …
- Works on mobile without requiring the finger dexterity of a neurosurgeon.
- Doesn’t give off strong “enter your bank account number and sort-code” vibes.
- Makes visitors want to buy things rather than check if you’ve gone into administration.
- Built so updates don’t feel like defusing a bomb.
- Comes with actual human beings you can phone when something goes wrong.
… then we should probably talk.
We’re a proper agency. We’ve got an office and everything. We answer emails within hours, not geological epochs. We don’t disappear only to be found in a Thai prison halfway through your project.
We build WordPress and WooCommerce sites because they work, they’re maintainable, and you won’t be held hostage by proprietary nonsense when you want to make a change. City-quality work without the London invoice that makes your FD weep.
The uncomfortable truth
Every day your website underperforms, you’re haemorrhaging potential customers to competitors who bothered to invest in their digital presence. That’s not scaremongering; that’s just maths.
So what now?
You’ve got two options:
Option A: Close this tab, go back to your disappointing website, and hope that somehow, miraculously, things improve on their own.
Option B: Get in touch with us. Have a conversation. No hard sell, no jargon, no “synergistic paradigm shifts”. Just a frank discussion about what you need and what it’ll actually cost. Although Frank’s off this week so don’t ask for him.
We’ve been at this for 25 years. We’ve outlasted Flash, Internet Explorer, and the career of seven Prime Ministers and counting. We’ll still be here when whatever trendy nonsense is currently fashionable has died its inevitable death.
Dave won’t save your site. We might.