Show IH: A platform that lets you build tech products without code
Hey IndieHackers!
For the past few months I've been building this platform that lets you build web products through a point and click interface.
It's called Stacker! You can see it in action: www.stackerlabs.com
It comes with a data backend, a frontend builder and "if this then that"-style automations. The idea is that you can build a very basic MVP of most things within 20 minutes, and that everything's configurable that there aren't many limitations on what you can build.
I have a some things I hope you guys might be able to help me with:
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Question to you all:
What things would you want a platform like this to be able to do? -
I'm looking for some beta customers.
There's still some functionality missing, and some of the interfaces need some love, so I'm looking for people where I can build out your product for you on the platform, and then teach you how to iterate on it in future.
Hey @skellystudios ,
The idea is solid, but I would give it an open demo, before asking any questions and/or account creating. Just to give folks a better idea of it's potential and what they can do with it.
Especially in the beginning when you want people to test it, reducing the friction for them to do so will increase the number of testers and therefore data points.
A fellow IH @RyanB, has a great example of a demo for his product that is wide open - https://cloudcampaign.io/demo
I can see the potential, good luck with it!
Hey –
Thanks for the feedback. Yeah, I think a live demo would be a great idea – and I guess I can also populate it with a dummy account, to get over the "empty box" feeling that the app currently has.
Thanks for the shoutout @JulianSamarjiev !
I highly recommend having an open demo. 100% of our customers use the demo before signing up.
And it has a conversion rate of 30% on some days! :o
Here's a screenshot of the Demo -> Signup funnel for February
https://ibb.co/nh9DVH
Stats speak for themselves ☺️
Great work @ryanB!
Hello, competitor!
(Actually not a direct competitor, but indirect definitely :)))
I tried to try your product and stuck at the first step. I just wanted to create some mvp, but you asked my name, phone number and kinda million other questions.
I'm really puzzled why you need all this information just to create an account.
I suspect that your functionality isn't probably ready yet. But that's fine. It's just my experience and I wish you good luck :)
Hey –
You're entirely right – it's because right now the platform's really hard to understand if you're new to it and it's empty. What I'm doing right now is reaching out to people and helping them build their apps with them, just while I get started.
As soon as I have functionality to drop people into a decent pre-built app, I'll start allowing signups from the homepage :)
Yeah. There are definitely way too many questions here. You're definitely going to break these up and move the user through a process instead of presenting this all at once.
For instance, you might ask Name + Email + Password + Plan to create an account, then take them to (something that resembles) your app and ask them what they want to call their project. Then you might ask about features. At this point, if you want to prevent them from using your app without you, you can lock it so they can't use it themselves and be like "Great! We'll set that up and get in contact"
Things like whether they're a business/personal project, what they're trying to build, and other comments can wait for when you reach out.
Ah yeah – this seems like a much more reasonable way of doing it. I can see how the typeform as it is could be pretty daunting/offputting.
Hey Michael,
Just came across your post today and saw the "made in london". We are running the first IH meetup in London tomorrow, thought you might be interested: https://www.indiehackers.com/forum/london-indie-hackers-meetup-1-b5b3cb024c
Oh wow, so unfortunately I'm already going to the Hacker News meetup tomorow, but I've joined the meetup group so I can hopefully come to a future one!
Same thing bubble.is can offer would be my benchmark. Unless you want to try going even simpler but less capable than that? I'd imagine that's quite a technically complex piece of software to build.
Yeah, bubble is a great reference point. Out of interest, what sort of stuff do you build with bubble?
I've not built anything very complex with bubble (tho it's on my todo list for sure!) though I have built several CRMs in Airtable for various types of businesses. For me if someone wants something that I don't care too much about building but I could whip it up quick for them using that kind of solution then I will do that.
It definitely seems like you're going after a solid problem: how to code together an MVP asap, so you can focus on marketing. So having a clean web builder + intuitive IFTT style logic system would make or break this.
I haven't tried it but would suggest that you look at the copy and see how to direct it specifically towards the type of people on this site. The tagline isn't that clear, so you might want to say something like "Build an MVP without code in minutes". Also, why not have pricing?
And bonus question: is there anything you think I should change about my landing page?
I found the landing page to be very engaging, but I noticed that the "see examples" button towards the bottom of the page didn't do anything.
Ah yeah good shout. I still need to build the examples page. I should probably take that out of the layout!