How we transformed the idea of a site builder
We’ll tell you about the path that our idea of a website creation tool has taken, before becoming a finished product and bringing us here.
A person needed a site to introduce himself or an organization on the Internet. A page on a social network does not satisfy his needs. There is not the same environment / audience, there is no sense of “one's own”, advertising is interfering or there is not enough variety of functions. A reasonable solution is to order a website from professionals, but it is not suitable for everyone. Then there is a desire to do everything yourself.
Consider the options.
“No, granny, it's me!”
Vovka in the Far Far Away
A person is motivated to make a site. Common reasons are a desire to control everything, a passion for knowledge or a troubled technical core.
This person is ready to understand any means of creating a site. Most likely, he He will start with an affordable solution and choose the site builder - a web service where the site is created with the help of mouse clicks - the choice depends on the amount of free time and ambition.
“Without plow - not a plowman, without a hammer - not a blacksmith.”
Proverb
A person would like to make a site if it does not require a lot of time and effort. We suspect that he is presented with a web service into which content is uploaded, and the output is a beautiful and modern site that will look adequate on modern devices.
This person does not want to get stuck in the process, because he will not get pleasure from the process - you need a result in a short time.
Nothing is easier! The needs of both types are met by template services.
The user enters information, answering the questions: “what's the name?”, “What is the site about?”, “Contact details?”, “What are we going to sell?”, “Which photos will we post?”. After entering the data, a list of options for displaying content is loaded - templates from which you like. Type B will dwell on this, while Type A will deal with additional settings.
However, templates have a serious drawback that arises from the idea of substituting arbitrary data in a fixed structure. The user is invited to select the whole set of templates without taking into account the specifics of the content, as if any template would be equally profitable to display any content. What should I do if the heading implies a slogan of five words, and you have ten, or a menu of three to five items would look good, and you have two?
Sites are too complex to create a large number of simultaneously versatile and diverse templates.
Since the templates do not take into account the features of the content, abandonment of them could give a more meaningful way to create sites where the user creates pages, layouts and fills them as he wants, initially based on the specifics of his content.
Simple sequential steps are a great idea, we decided a year ago and got down to business, imagining that such a method would be interesting first of all for type B.
Having tested the resulting service on several tens of potential customers of type B, we realized that a ramp-free approach seriously complicates them work. The user is already lost at the beginning and does not understand which pages to create. Then he does not know how and in what order the content should be placed on the pages. Type B does not have a holistic picture of what he wants to get in the end, so this option does not suit him.
Type A only benefits from the lack of templates: after spending some time, he learns to create and adapt templates to his own needs.
With such a picture, a complete rejection of the templates would mean a rejection of part of the target audience, so modern designers offer mixed solutions. Examples: squarespace , ukit , blocs .
Since we wanted a tool to help Type B, a concept change took place. Since this type does not need a site builder with extensive functionality and a low entry threshold is important, the number of settings has dropped dramatically, but new data types have appeared. The emphasis has shifted from building up the visual component of sites towards simplifying input and searching for universal solutions for appearance.
So we got a new service for creating individual sites, like classic blogs, now popular thanks to GitHub Pages and static site generators .
We will talk more about the cones and about the positive results associated with working on the service in the following articles.
If the article aroused interest in you or you just like to "poke" the latest services, we invite you to open beta on www.cuiq.ru .
All success!
Background
A person needed a site to introduce himself or an organization on the Internet. A page on a social network does not satisfy his needs. There is not the same environment / audience, there is no sense of “one's own”, advertising is interfering or there is not enough variety of functions. A reasonable solution is to order a website from professionals, but it is not suitable for everyone. Then there is a desire to do everything yourself.
Consider the options.
Type A
“No, granny, it's me!”
Vovka in the Far Far Away
A person is motivated to make a site. Common reasons are a desire to control everything, a passion for knowledge or a troubled technical core.
This person is ready to understand any means of creating a site. Most likely, he He will start with an affordable solution and choose the site builder - a web service where the site is created with the help of mouse clicks - the choice depends on the amount of free time and ambition.
Type B
“Without plow - not a plowman, without a hammer - not a blacksmith.”
Proverb
A person would like to make a site if it does not require a lot of time and effort. We suspect that he is presented with a web service into which content is uploaded, and the output is a beautiful and modern site that will look adequate on modern devices.
This person does not want to get stuck in the process, because he will not get pleasure from the process - you need a result in a short time.
Patterns
Nothing is easier! The needs of both types are met by template services.
The user enters information, answering the questions: “what's the name?”, “What is the site about?”, “Contact details?”, “What are we going to sell?”, “Which photos will we post?”. After entering the data, a list of options for displaying content is loaded - templates from which you like. Type B will dwell on this, while Type A will deal with additional settings.
However, templates have a serious drawback that arises from the idea of substituting arbitrary data in a fixed structure. The user is invited to select the whole set of templates without taking into account the specifics of the content, as if any template would be equally profitable to display any content. What should I do if the heading implies a slogan of five words, and you have ten, or a menu of three to five items would look good, and you have two?
Sites are too complex to create a large number of simultaneously versatile and diverse templates.
No patterns
Since the templates do not take into account the features of the content, abandonment of them could give a more meaningful way to create sites where the user creates pages, layouts and fills them as he wants, initially based on the specifics of his content.
Simple sequential steps are a great idea, we decided a year ago and got down to business, imagining that such a method would be interesting first of all for type B.
Having tested the resulting service on several tens of potential customers of type B, we realized that a ramp-free approach seriously complicates them work. The user is already lost at the beginning and does not understand which pages to create. Then he does not know how and in what order the content should be placed on the pages. Type B does not have a holistic picture of what he wants to get in the end, so this option does not suit him.
Type A only benefits from the lack of templates: after spending some time, he learns to create and adapt templates to his own needs.
With such a picture, a complete rejection of the templates would mean a rejection of part of the target audience, so modern designers offer mixed solutions. Examples: squarespace , ukit , blocs .
Our way
Since we wanted a tool to help Type B, a concept change took place. Since this type does not need a site builder with extensive functionality and a low entry threshold is important, the number of settings has dropped dramatically, but new data types have appeared. The emphasis has shifted from building up the visual component of sites towards simplifying input and searching for universal solutions for appearance.
So we got a new service for creating individual sites, like classic blogs, now popular thanks to GitHub Pages and static site generators .
We will talk more about the cones and about the positive results associated with working on the service in the following articles.
If the article aroused interest in you or you just like to "poke" the latest services, we invite you to open beta on www.cuiq.ru .
All success!