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4 Comments

Is this problem valuable for you?

Hey Indiehackers

I'm considering building a simple low code tool that fixes the problem of generating placeholders when images are loading and I was wondering if this problem it solves is something you deal with also.

Basically this problem is well known that on devices with slower internet connections, images on your app load slower, this causes problems like layout shifting and generally just isn't nice. One solution is to generate small conversions of the image (like small thumbnails) that load fast, but this is imo kinda annonying to implement and maintain (now you have alot of extra images to keep track of). Another solution is having sekeleton loaders, but again these are hard to get right and look kinda boring.

So my solution to the problem is just a simple script you include in your frontend that uses the BlurHash algorithm developed by Wolt to make nice image placeholders. This feature is part of some frameworks, like next js but I still think is this valuable for a lot of people not using frameworks like this. The goal is offering a "one click solution" that just works and is fast (I'm considering using stuff like cloudflare workers and kv to generate placeholders at the edge)

What do you guys think? Would you be willing to pay for example, 5$ a month for 500 unique placeholders a month?

I'm still very early on this idea, got it while at work immediately got hyped, but I really need some insight so any feedback/comments are much appreciated.

posted to Icon for group Ideas and Validation
Ideas and Validation
on June 27, 2023
  1. 1

    As someone working on a new AI I don't think this is outrightly valuable to me...

    HOWEVER if the blur preview the option to stay a preview and had an email capture field I think that would be extremely valuable to me (I'd at least be willing to give it a try).

    This could be a way to capture leads for people interested in quite a few types of image based value pieces:

    • Previews of upcoming app launches/updates
    • Infographics
    • Slide centric blog pages

    For the core premise however my AI app and my other startups are very text centric then for any image centric content we use platforms or services or tech that already has image optimization.

    One thing I think would help would be to try to find people to interview on the problem to do problem discovery interviews. Here's the process I teach at a accelerator I mentor at (I also use this for my own/client businesses and startups):

    https://blog.leanstack.com/the-updated-problem-interview-script-and-a-new-canvas/

    I'm also thinking the pricing model is a little unique as I do run a creative community so when I see placeholders as the unit of pricing I get worried about what "placeholder" means like if I have 1 image on 5 pages does that count as 5 placeholders or is it whenever someone lands on the page and the placeholder is generated?

    1. 1

      It's more as a way to make loading states nice (you image optimization still wont really help here if you are loading stuff that is detailed, depending on the client images might still take 1-2s + to load) rather than hide images/content. As for pricing, it's pr unique image that a placeholder has to be made for, so if you have image #1 on 5 different pages that counts as 1 unqiue image/placeholder.

      1. 1

        I'm probably not the target audience XD

        But I did some googling and I didn't easily find a solution like the one your suggesting so it's definitely unique and could potential save a team time depending on their tech stack

        Good luck!

        1. 1

          Thank you! Yeah I'm really sure how to narrow down the target audiance other than "people with lots of images on their website" which is very broad haha. But yeah the benfit would be "zero cost" implemtation for potentiel customers

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