Building a website builder. Target audience?
I work as a single web developer/designer for a company and develop simple wordpress sites for small businesses.
The Problem:
Every time a new site is sold, the same issues come up. The client never knows what they want design wise. The other issue, is that once the site is built, they will want updates. What I'm finding out, is that there is too much resistance to remember how to update their wordpress page, or its too complicated if I use something like Divi. So they end up emailing me to make the change.
The Solution:
Thinking about all of this, I started mocking up a website builder with a dead simple CMS. You drag and drop pre-made blocks like many editors, and then click on each element to update content. It's a lot more restrictive than others, but I think theres a market that needs that.
My Question:
Now that my product is getting closer to launch, I've been having an identity crisis on my target audience. I could see myself and other web agencies/individuals managing sites for others using product. I could also see the business directly using this as well. What do you think would be a better audience to go after or focus on first?
There are 100s of website builders.
I should know I built https://versoly.com/ :)
I have spoke with a few agency owners and they all create their own terrible CMS systems or use WP.
If you did enough education you could potentially replace their legacy systems but as a solo founder it will be close to impossible.
If you really want to solve this problem please get in contact I could talk about this topic all day.
Versoly is great! I actually came across your builder when looking into competitors and gave it a try. While I really like it and the flexibility is awesome, I'm trying to give users a much more 'rigid' set of rules so to speak.
I absolutely know what you mean about the terrible CMS systems out there that agencies use. The more I talk about this out load, the more confident I am in going after small business owners rather than agencies.
Would you be interested in chatting more outside of this thread? It would be great to get your feedback on a couple of things.
Interesting, we plan on adding permissions so they can only change text and images.
Sure email me at volkan@versoly.com
Versoly is fantastic. The only issue you might have is collecting payments. All the form builders out there are pretty crappy and don't integrate with Stripe well. Paddle is good but it's not as customizable as I would like. Good luck!
We're looking into this do you want one time or recurring?
We looked into paddle and it seemed like just as much hassle as Stripe without the ability to customise it.
"The client never knows what they want design wise. The other issue, is that once the site is built, they will want updates. What I'm finding out, is that there is too much resistance to remember how to update their wordpress page, or its too complicated if I use something like Divi. So they end up emailing me to make the change." - funny how spot on this description is. Same experience here. I ended up with a different solution instead of a website builder - a productized service to a super niche group of business owners.
Don't know what design - I make a standard site design that they can see on my site right away
Updates - cater to specific niche of business owners who don't need much updates (I know, because I'm one of them for my other service business) and don't want to tangle with learning to manage a website
Forget how to use CMS - solved by niche crowd (see above)
Want many customization - again, solved by intentionally restrictive package, and to niche crowd who just want a simple site
For your site builder, my take is to focus and go niche first, with a crowd you are familiar with or already work with. If it works, you can expand the feature set and offering to others.
Interesting, thanks for your feedback!
So with Sweet Jam Sites (awesome logo btw), you build the site for a single build fee correct? How do you deal with the deliverables such as client logos, pictures, content, ect? I've tried sending out forms, checklists, ect, and its always just like pulling teeth. This question above may be solved by your particular niche.
On more of a marketing level, how did you find your niche? Did you run some tests in different markets to narrow down which niche your product fit?
Thanks! Yes, build the site for a single fee. I like how you put it! Might just steal that copy for the website itself haha.
I use a google form to onboard the client to give me all the copy, content, images, logo etc, using annotated screenshots of my own site (because the site itself is a demo) to guide them on what to do. If you click on the "buy now" button, it brings you to the form. It's not ideal - like I wished they can upload files directly, but havent got that figured out yet. Referring to images/site back and forth might not be the most intuitive for customers too, so will get feedback and iterate and see. But yes, going niche and productized helps because it's a very fixed set of specs or features, little variations so it's easier to show them what I need.
Re: finding niche, it wasn't really scientific tbh, as it's an MVP at this stage, so just throwing this out first to see if it sticks. I just went with my own experience running my own productized consulting site and realising that a service like that would help (instead of tangling with WP, SQL injections security breaches, and a constantly updating version).
And also a bit of experience talking to and working with peers who are also running businesses and need sites. Every site builder is asking them for a few days or weeks of learning some new CMS to build the site they need, which many are not really interested to do (either no time, or interest, or just not talented that way in design). They are not in tech, not inclined to, e.g. one customer is running a user recruitment service, another in events management. They are used to outsourcing and prefer getting a designer/dev to build a site for them at a fee, but as small biz they don't have the thousands of dollars for some good freelancer or agency.
Heh the logo is a free icon actually. I do need to get v2 out, or should I?
Very nice! Thanks for the info. I’ve been reading a lot of books on marketing and traction, and the marketing half is still pretty new to me. Would you be interested in taking a look at my product in it’s still very early stage? If so drop me your email, I would love to get your feedback!