I launched a free browser-based crypto/media tool site last week — here's what I built and learned

Hey IH,

I launched CryptoWave (cryptowaveapp.com) less than a week ago

and wanted to share what I built and what I've learned so far.

What it is

33 browser-based tools — AES/RSA encryption, SHA-256/Bcrypt

hashing, audio/video conversion, PDF merge/split, QR codes,

image compression. Everything runs client-side. No uploads,

no accounts, no cookies.

I built it because I kept using random online tools to encrypt

files or convert audio, but never felt confident about where

my data was going. So I made one where it never leaves the device.

Tech stack

Vanilla HTML/CSS/JS — no framework. FFmpeg.wasm for media

processing. pdf-lib for PDF tools. Deployed on Cloudflare Pages

for free.

What I did this week

Mostly SEO groundwork:

- Fixed canonical URL mismatches (Cloudflare strips .html,

my canonical tags didn't — caused redirect errors in GSC)

- Added HowTo schema + expanded FAQs on 10 pages

- Split hash.html into dedicated sha256.html and bcrypt.html

pages so each algorithm can rank independently

- Added a Related Tools section across all pages for

internal linking

Numbers after 1 week

- 15 real visitors (GA4)

- Cloudflare shows ~500 "visits" but most are bots/crawlers

- 3 tool_used events tracked

- 0 signups (no accounts to sign up for)

What I'm figuring out

Getting initial traction without a built-in audience is harder

than building the thing. If anyone has shipped something similar

and found a channel that actually worked early on, I'd love to hear it.

Happy to answer any questions about the FFmpeg.wasm integration

or the Web Crypto API — those had the most gotchas.