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10 Comments

Landing page is live

After spending 4 days building out the backend, I spent nearly as much as time on the sales page.

But I did all the design myself (logo, page design, copy writing, css), so it kinda makes sense. Also, I think a clear sales page is probably just as important and deserving just as much attention as a backend.

, Founder of Icon for DialTone
DialTone
on September 19, 2021
  1. 2

    Congratulations! 🎉 Could you tell us more about how you have built backend for dialtone. Stack & hosting, db etc.,?

    1. 2

      Thanks!

      This project is built using SvelteKit https://kit.svelte.dev

      I chose it because a) Svelte has been a joy to use, and b) it can deploy to cloud functions (I'm using Vercel). That means I won't have much to do to scale this up - which is kind of important for a phone system.

      The app is basically an integration of Shopify and Twilio. Specifically the Twilio Voice API. It uses Twilio's Number API to pick and assign a Toll-Free number, and then when a call is made to the number, Twilio calls one of my app's endpoint which returns Twiml (xml format for phone systems). ie it could return <Say>Thanks for calling Margies Cup Cakes</Say> and Twilio would output that as speech with a synthetic voice.

      The other integration is with Shippo https://goshippo.com, I use them to lookup tracking numbers. So if the caller wants to check their order status, they enter their order number and zip code, the app calls Shippo's API to get the latest info and then reads it back to the caller.

      I also did the design work myself, with a lot of inspiration from the Refactoring UI book https://www.refactoringui.com/. That part has actually taken me more time than the backend.

    2. 2

      Second this. Also how you came up with the idea

      1. 1

        I had this idea a few months ago when I was running daily experiments:
        https://1000experiments.dev/posts/e-commerce-phone-system

        The other day a consulting client mentioned they have a heavy phone support workload around the holiday season, so I figured this project could maybe work.

        What it had going for it: I felt most of it could be built in a week, giing more time to do marketing, and I likely have a first customer. So to me that's enough to try it out.

        Also, I used to work at Shopify, so I know a lot about the system, which can't hurt.

  2. 2

    Featured your product on my SaaS Community - https://my.chandrasaas.com/c/saas/dialtone?

    Good luck to you Joshnuss

    Venkat

    1. 1

      Thanks Venkat! Much appreciated

  3. 1

    Congrats.

    Fyi, the <strong> tag in the <p> under your <h1> isn't bold on my mac/chrome. I don't think the font weight is included in the page. Rather than include the font weight may I suggest just adding the colour #324d67 (same as H1) to the <strong> to make it pop but fit in.

    Also much appreciation for your svelte repo's. They have been super helpful while learning svelte.

    Good luck with DialTone.

    1. 1

      Thanks for the suggestion @_goodjobjohn! I'll update the styles.

      and glad you found those repos helpful, svelte is pretty nice to work with.

  4. 1

    Just curious, are you a backend or full stack developer by trade?

    1. 1

      I do a bit of both. Most of my career was backend, but lately doing a bit more frontend too.

      More projects here: https://github.com/joshnuss