Using quarantine to release my new product in a week (+ No-Code rocks)

A week ago I tested positive for coronavirus. That meant I had to stay at home in quarantine on my own.

To survive the week, I thought it would be the perfect time to build a product I've been thinking about.

I set myself the deadline of the end of my quarantine to release the first version. During this time I'd have to choose tools to create the app with, learn how to use the tools, and then actually build the app.

The good news?

I finished with enough spare time to write this post 😊

I'm now the proud owner of Statheap, a webapp that allows marketers to search through a database of B2B statistics and then save their favorite stats.

Full disclosure: there are still a couple of bugs, the database is quite small, and the design isn't final (Why does everyone's site on here look so good!?).

But I consider it launched because the site is live and all the core features are up and running.

Here's a quick overview of the development process

I knew I wanted to build the app with No-Code tools. I've tried a few of them without releasing anything, so I knew it was possible to create what I wanted.

I started out using Adalo, as I had previously built a mobile app on the platform and I loved how easy it was. But it soon became clear that it wasn't the best option for web apps.

I then tried Bubble, but struggled with the database features. Finally, I settled on building the site with Webflow and using Jetboost to provide the extra functionality I needed.

I also set up MemberStack on the site as I planned to let users save their stats in a profile (currently all saved stats are saved locally in the browser). However, I removed the integration as I'm not sure it's necessary at this stage.

It took me a day or so to get used to the tools, and I thought I hit a wall on Saturday night. But I got there in the end and I'm just so impressed by what these tools allow.

Now I've launched, I need to focus on three things:

Adding more stats to the database
Attracting users
Refining the design

I'm excited to see where it goes, though!