AT&T is offering to help build and “improve” websites with a purchase of their web hosting services — fan-freaking-tastic (please note the sarcasm).

They’re doing this under the guise of helpfulness to small and medium sized businesses, but I promise this will be less helpful and more hurtful. No disgrace to AT&T, I like their products, have an AT&T mobile phone and think they do good work; however, building and improving websites isn’t their specialty.

These are going to be more off-the-shelf crap generic products. If you’ve seen one FrontPage site, you’ve seen them all, which is exactly how I imagine the AT&T developed ones will be.

Their design experts will work with business owners on, “issues such as copywriting, blog and forum integration, database development, search engine optimization and electronic shopping cart capabilities.”

Now, maybe it’s just me, but when was the last time you met a designer you’d trust with your SEO efforts? Seriously, SEO is rooted in good content strategies. How many designers do you know who would love to write and give you tips on your writing?

I promise you this: There will be some messes to clean up after this. Web hosting companies should stick to what they do well: web hosting. If we all just do what we’re good at, the world will be a happier place.