Idea validation: configurable website banners as a service
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScoHggtcRxveNqPCeBArRF3PF0894CY0Z2XhXpRG0yIJkPFnw/viewform?usp=sf_link
Here's the idea:
A web service that gives you a javascript snippet that you embed on your website. Using a dashboard you can configure and enable/disable different website banners for various use cases (maintenance mode, feature announcements, etc.). You'd be able to configure the entire look and feel of each banner and turn them on and off instantly on your website.
Do you think you would find this useful? I put together a short google form to gather a few other data points and it would be a big help if I could get some feedback from the IH community.
Thanks!
Great idea, I think a lot of eCommerce companies would love this. Especially if you allow A/B testing
Good idea, I hadn't thought about a/b testing but just added it to the list. Thanks!
I have actually thought of making something similar for my own projects before. And at two of my previous full time gigs, I was tasked with implementing banners for "maintenance" or "down time" and other random occurrences. So, I think people have a need for this. It could be especially useful for people using no code tools as well.
Same here, I've also considered making something like this.
At my last job, it wasn't uncommon for requests to go to developers to add a banner on top of all the pages to let customers know about maintenance downtime, increased processing times, company holidays, etc.
From the developers' point of view, it was always an annoyance to them because they have a lot of other things to work on so they never implemented a generic solution, they always just hard-coded it in until they were asked to take it down.
From the business' side of view, these banners were required and they were often upset at delays in getting them out because all the developers were busy with other things.
So, in short; I think it's a good idea! :)
Thanks for the info, this is good to know. I've also had to deal with those one off tasks in the past and figured other teams deal with it too.
You mean something like sumo.com ?
I've thought about something like this as well.
There are a number of problems that I found when looking into hits here. Maybe you will find them useful.
First, you have to build an extremely reliable system, as it needs to be available in case of displaying emergency messages. It will also have very spiky usage. If your product is ever down for even just a minute, this will ring alarm bells for your customer, who will pay you money to allow them to do extremely mission-critical messaging when their things fail. You have to
Then there is the customizability. I needed something like this myself, but nothing existed. So I just built my own component, with its own design. Recently, there was an outage in one of the services I use, and they had their own banner, integrated into their design, interacting with the rest of the page. It is very likely that a service like this has the most value for rather large companies. Convincing them to rely on a small service will be the first hurdle. Allowing them to integrate the snippet into their systems will be the second one. Some want a banner. Some want a box. Some want a popup.
Lastly, integrations. Imagine an outage at one of your customers. They may have a status page, either self-hosted or with a service. They will open an incident there. With your service, they might need to start another incident on your own admin panel. Customers will likely expect this service to seamlessly integrate into their already existing monitoring and status information solutions.
So if you are interested in finding good solutions for reliability, customizability, and integrations, this is a good project to look into. The widget and messaging infrastructure are probably built within a few days. The three things I outlined may take much, much longer but may also be the requirement to turn this into a profitable B2B business.