How we transformed the idea of site builder
We will talk about the way in which we thought about the tool for creating websites, before turning into a finished product and bring us here.
A person needed a website to present himself or an organization on the Internet. A page on a social network does not satisfy its needs. There is a wrong environment / audience, there is no feeling of “one's own”, advertising interferes or there is a lack of a variety of functions. The sensible solution is to order the site from professionals, but it doesn’t suit everyone. Then there is a desire to do everything yourself.
Consider the options.
“No, granny, it's me!"
Vovka in the Far Far Away Kingdom
')
Man is motivated to make a website. Common causes are a desire to control everything, a passion for knowledge, or a technical vein that does not give rest.
This person is ready to understand any means of creating a site. Most likely, he will start with an affordable solution and select the site designer for himself - a web service where the site is created by mouse manipulations. The choice depends on the amount of free time and ambition.
“Without a plow - not a plowman, without a hammer - not a blacksmith.”
Proverb
A person would like to make a website if it does not require much time and effort. We suspect that it seems to be a web service that loads content, and the output is a beautiful and modern website that will adequately look on modern devices.
This person does not want to get stuck in the process, because he will not enjoy the process - you need a result in a short time.
Nothing is easier! Needs of both types are satisfied by template-based services.
The user enters information by answering the questions: “What is the name?”, “What is the site about?”, “Contact details?”, “What are we going to sell?”, “What photos will we post?”. After entering the data, a list of content display options is loaded - templates from which the one you like is selected. Type B will stop there, and type A will do the additional setup.
However, templates have a serious drawback, which follows from the idea of substituting arbitrary data into a fixed structure. The user is offered to select the entire set of templates without taking into account the specifics of the content, as if any template would be equally beneficial to demonstrate any content. What if the cap implies a slogan of five words, and you have ten, or would a menu of three to five items look good, and you would have two?
Sites are too complex to create a large number of simultaneously versatile and diverse templates.
Since the templates do not take into account the peculiarities of the content, abandoning them could give a more meaningful way of creating sites where the user creates pages, lays out and fills them as he wants, initially based on the specifics of their content.
Simple sequential steps are a great idea, we decided a year ago and set to work, imagining that such a method would be interesting primarily for type B.
Having tested the resulting service on several dozens of potential customers of type B, we realized that the unconventional approach seriously complicates their work. The user is lost at the beginning and does not understand which pages to create. Then he does not know how and in what order on the pages to place the content. Type B does not have a holistic picture of what it wants to get in the end, so this option does not suit it.
Type A only gains from lack of templates: after spending some time, he learns to create and adjust templates for his own needs.
With such a picture, the complete rejection of templates would mean the rejection of a part of the target audience, therefore modern designers offer mixed solutions. Examples: squarespace , ukit , blocs .
Since we wanted a tool to help type B, there was a change of concept. Since this type does not need a website builder with extensive functionality and a low entry threshold is important, the number of settings has decreased dramatically, but new data types have appeared. The focus has shifted from building up the visual component of the websites towards simplifying the input and search for universal solutions for appearance.
This is how the new service turned out to create individual sites like classic blogs now popular thanks to GitHub Pages and static site generators .
About the stuffed cones and the positive results associated with the work on the service, we will describe in more detail in the following articles.
If the article awakened your interest in you or you just love to “poke” fresh services, we invite you to open beta testing at www.cuiq.ru.
Successes to all!
Prehistory
A person needed a website to present himself or an organization on the Internet. A page on a social network does not satisfy its needs. There is a wrong environment / audience, there is no feeling of “one's own”, advertising interferes or there is a lack of a variety of functions. The sensible solution is to order the site from professionals, but it doesn’t suit everyone. Then there is a desire to do everything yourself.
Consider the options.
Type A
“No, granny, it's me!"
Vovka in the Far Far Away Kingdom
')
Man is motivated to make a website. Common causes are a desire to control everything, a passion for knowledge, or a technical vein that does not give rest.
This person is ready to understand any means of creating a site. Most likely, he will start with an affordable solution and select the site designer for himself - a web service where the site is created by mouse manipulations. The choice depends on the amount of free time and ambition.
Type B
“Without a plow - not a plowman, without a hammer - not a blacksmith.”
Proverb
A person would like to make a website if it does not require much time and effort. We suspect that it seems to be a web service that loads content, and the output is a beautiful and modern website that will adequately look on modern devices.
This person does not want to get stuck in the process, because he will not enjoy the process - you need a result in a short time.
Templates
Nothing is easier! Needs of both types are satisfied by template-based services.
The user enters information by answering the questions: “What is the name?”, “What is the site about?”, “Contact details?”, “What are we going to sell?”, “What photos will we post?”. After entering the data, a list of content display options is loaded - templates from which the one you like is selected. Type B will stop there, and type A will do the additional setup.
However, templates have a serious drawback, which follows from the idea of substituting arbitrary data into a fixed structure. The user is offered to select the entire set of templates without taking into account the specifics of the content, as if any template would be equally beneficial to demonstrate any content. What if the cap implies a slogan of five words, and you have ten, or would a menu of three to five items look good, and you would have two?
Sites are too complex to create a large number of simultaneously versatile and diverse templates.
No templates
Since the templates do not take into account the peculiarities of the content, abandoning them could give a more meaningful way of creating sites where the user creates pages, lays out and fills them as he wants, initially based on the specifics of their content.
Simple sequential steps are a great idea, we decided a year ago and set to work, imagining that such a method would be interesting primarily for type B.
Having tested the resulting service on several dozens of potential customers of type B, we realized that the unconventional approach seriously complicates their work. The user is lost at the beginning and does not understand which pages to create. Then he does not know how and in what order on the pages to place the content. Type B does not have a holistic picture of what it wants to get in the end, so this option does not suit it.
Type A only gains from lack of templates: after spending some time, he learns to create and adjust templates for his own needs.
With such a picture, the complete rejection of templates would mean the rejection of a part of the target audience, therefore modern designers offer mixed solutions. Examples: squarespace , ukit , blocs .
Our way
Since we wanted a tool to help type B, there was a change of concept. Since this type does not need a website builder with extensive functionality and a low entry threshold is important, the number of settings has decreased dramatically, but new data types have appeared. The focus has shifted from building up the visual component of the websites towards simplifying the input and search for universal solutions for appearance.
This is how the new service turned out to create individual sites like classic blogs now popular thanks to GitHub Pages and static site generators .
About the stuffed cones and the positive results associated with the work on the service, we will describe in more detail in the following articles.
If the article awakened your interest in you or you just love to “poke” fresh services, we invite you to open beta testing at www.cuiq.ru.
Successes to all!
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/293912/
All Articles