Why I'm never coding a marketing site again. EVER
When we started building Senja, I had the brilliant idea of coding our marketing website from scratch.
I've always preferred having control over every element on a site. Building the site myself would mean having unlimited flexibility concerning design, performance, SEO etc. My only limitation would be my skillset.
The moment I got a marketing cofounder though, everything went downhill very quickly.
He handles marketing, so he needed the power to control the site's structure, copy and design.
If he wanted to update a little text on the website, he'd have to message me. Then I'd drop what I'm doing, and make the update.
He couldn't create pages or blog posts on his own. He'd need to write the copy, send it to me and I'd build the page.
As his requests increased, things became a drag very quickly.
I thought, no problem! I was still hell-bent on coding the website myself, so I decided I'd build with the 🌈Jamstack™️
Jamstack is an architectural approach that decouples the web experience layer from data and business logic.
To simplify, we have a database with all our website content in a friendly UI, and the marketing website would just pull from that. That way, my cofounder could update the site without touching the code.
By integrating a CMS, he would have control over all the site's content and there'd be much less back and forth.
Even though it helped for a while, this didn't solve the problem.
Building a rapidly changing site with the Jamstack has been nothing but a pain.
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I have to reinvent the wheel for literally everything. Basic SEO, animations, performance, structure, navigation, image optimisation etc.
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Building new things is just horrible. I have to constantly worry about backwards compatibility. I also have to create + maintain new components for the smallest additions.
Rebuilding our landing page has proven to me beyond a doubt that coding a marketing site from scratch is just a really bad idea.
At first I thought it was cool. Now it's just a pain and is keeping me from doing the thing I want to be doing. Actually improving my product.
For a scrappy MVP, it might be worth it. But once things start to scale you'll get into trouble very quickly.
Just use Webflow/Framer/whatever floats your boat. You'll save so much time in the long run.
I feel your frustration completely! I went through the EXACT same process as you.
Coded everything from scratch, got sick of having to update. Then just like you I found the JamStack and thought I was saved!
Sure the marketing team can now make copy changes, but that’s just a tiny part of a website. Just this past month we added some new content: an email newsletter capture form, a new set of pages with special navigation, updated the way some of our pictures are displayed, etc.. Very basic things that every website does. It was all dev hours!
So now my photography company basically has a full time dev! This is bonkers to me. But we feel completely stuck. We have talked about moving to Webflow. But I’ve tried Webflow it’s not super easy, and our marketing team was struggling with anything beyond simple pages. If we were on Webflow we’d still need someone who is an expert in Webflow for the same amount of hours per month.
Once your marketing reaches a certain level, I think you just need a full time person dedicated to the website.
Adding new content is the biggest problem with using a CMS haha. In bigger teams completely separating dev from marketing probably isn't that big of a problem. But for indie hackers, if you can't completely decouple the two, what's the point.
I'm currently really liking Framer because it's built primarily for designers not devs. But then again, my cofounder isn't a designer 😆
I was gonna recommend Framer! It's amazing, I just started using it this weekend.
Little biased but agreed. We have a ton of indie hackers use https://versoly.com/ for those exact reasons.
Any time spent thinking about how to SEO optimise your headless CMS is time that could be spent talking to customers or building product.
I used to have a blog site that I wrote from scratch using JAMstack also. I tried from Gatsby to Wordpress until I settled with Nextjs. At first, I thought it would be cool because I have all the power over my page. However, the more marketing related stuffs involved like SEO, content management, domain name configuration, it was extremely struggling. After a while suffering, I decided to switch to a blog service like Ghost so that I can focus fully on writting blog instead of managing a blog page UI, data and domain. If you have a budget for landing page or blog page, I believe the service do better than you.
This also makes sense if you plan on selling - potential buyers usually prefer not to have to learn a new custom codebase.
Great post! The only issue with that is the cost of no code platform.
OMG Senja is sooooo cool! I was in love the second I checked it out, and I'm in onboarding right now - so whatever you did with your website completely works for me :D it's really delightful and well designed
I also can speak from the marketing person side, my technical co-founder and I originally struggled mightily to find the right tools and blend to create our marketing site. Wasted years of time and money on this stuff. From the beginning, we should have used Tailwind CSS. And now that I see Framer, I'm positive that's also great.
As for blogs, those are really non-negotiable for any SaaS. After years messing around with wordpress and notion, we started using Ghost.io (paying 30 / month) a few months ago with a template and I really like how that allows me, as the marketer, to churn out blogs and it solves the issue of page speed, SEO stuff - has all the things you need (big companies use Ghost for this reason).
That being said, I just appreciate this post because it is one of THE most annoying and finicky decision points teams will come to and I wish everyone would just see this advice earlier.
If anyone's reading this and curious about the outcome of what my team ultimately did, here's our marketing website and blog combo:
Website: https://kahana.co/
Blog: https://blog.kahana.co/
Congratulations again on Senja - it's sick!
Also using Ghost. Being the genius I am though, I decided to also use Ghost as a cms. So every post that pulls from https://senja.io/blog pulls from Ghost ($30/month) 😅
I'm currently looking into framer. Seems like the best of both worlds
Thanks for this. I'm currently in the build it all myself phase and have been wondering if it will slow me down later, but I guess I shouldn't worry about that until I actually get there.
Anyways you definitely gave me more to think about going forward.
It sounds like you've had a frustrating experience building a rapidly changing site with the Jamstack. While the idea of building a marketing site from scratch might seem cool initially, the reality of maintaining backwards compatibility and constantly creating and maintaining new components can become a real burden, taking time away from improving your actual product.
Using a CMS like Webflow or Framer can be a great solution to this problem, giving your cofounder control over the site's content without requiring them to touch the code. This can reduce the back and forth and make the process of updating your site much smoother.
You're right, most of us face the same situation as you've faced when dealing with non-technical persons. They tend to ask for help with everything.
I remember a similar situation when my marketing team shared details that required changes, and I had to update most of the content in 4 days again and again. I had to put aside my own work to handle tasks that were not within my scope.
You're also correct that choosing a good platform is important, as it can save us from wasting valuable time on minor and trivial matters.
I've experienced this issue before and appreciate your effort in documenting and articulating this topic for this community.
Also following Senja as part of https://microsaasdb.com/ since you reported your second customer and glad to see it grow 10X in this period. Congratulations and keep up the good work.
Warning! I am a developer so my opinion may be biased.
For many marketing sites using plain HTML provides greater flexibility and control over website development projects.
It is easy enough for non-technical users to change the content on their sites.
Unlike some no-code tools that require some technical knowledge to use, HTML is easy to understand and modify, even for beginners.
Also, HTML is a more lightweight than many no-code tools, which can result in better website performance.
Moreover, by using HTML, developers have more control over the code and can create a more customized and unique website.
Yours,
KodingKitty
Great post! No code plateformes are really god to build MVP and have first customers. Once you hit a certain point you have to switch to a propre (traditional) code stack. I also believe that no code plateforme can’t be used for any product.
Currently working on some product design for a start up that uses Webflow.
The marketing people still constantly need me to make changes because they don’t know design fundamentals.
The real LPT is to find someone who’s actually done some marketing design or any kind of design, really.
That's really helpful to know.
Quick question: How has your experience with Webflow been?
Does it make things more/less complicated/limited/faster/easier/etc. than making a site with, say, React + code?
I've spent years coding, but I'm wondering if I should still jump on the no-code train.
If you’ve spent years coding I’m not sure it would speed things up, outside of having some pre-built components. Which I think there’s plenty of boilerplate systems that do that already.
Webflow specifically bridges the gap for people like me that know basic ideas around HTML and CSS but didn’t develop a true skill for SWE.
As for interactions and stuff with Webflow, it’s pretty limited. They introduced eCommerxe and membership stuff now but you’re not going to be able to build an entire app in Webflow like you would with something like Bubble.io or Softr.
I must say for me a landing page or marketing site is almost always just 1 sheet of html that is it. It does it job. No builder or whatsoever is needed imo
A landing page != a marketing site.
A marketing site can have dozens of landing pages, blog posts, feature pages, case studies, lead magnets and resources, legal info et cetera.
If you think you can satisfy those with just 1 sheet of html, you haven't built a marketing site before.
I think as long the site is not too complicated and requires nothing special simple static html will do the job
That’s not the point. The moment you need to collaborate with a non technical person, you’re going to run into trouble v quickly like I’m suggesting in my post.
If you’re working alone on a small project, coding a small page is just fine though. Do whatever fits best.
I building a birthday flower website https://sentiments.ae/ and want a add new animation photos so how can we add through coding
Yes, and of course wordpress. when it is optimized, it is blazing fast... and it is the standard for SEO...
I built https://chatgptpluginslist.com
with wordpress.
And we are ranking in google for "chatgpt plugins" after 4 days already.