Another approach to this (doing quite well): https://onuniverse.com/
Show HN: Milkshake – Make Websites from a Phone
71–80 of 92 posts
Re: Show HN: Milkshake – Make Websites from a Phone
#72This is a such a weird niche. Personally I love "business card" websites but I feel that this is not a correct way to approach this. Why stick with this weird format instead of some responsive grid/flex design? Why only limit to two slide pages? It seems like you guys reinventing wheel here and burdening yourself with unecessary restrictions. I swear the first person to adapt hugo/lektor/pelican for casual mobile mar…
Because almost nobody browses Instagram from a desktop website. IG themselves discourage it by providing a gimped experience on web. So there is a 90%+ chance that anybody clicking on the link in the IG bio is already on a mobile device.
Re: Show HN: Milkshake – Make Websites from a Phone
#73Was hoping for a codeeditor with sftp but neat project for the masses.
The target audience for this are likely to use off-the-shelf solutions as much as possible. Apps like Adobe Spark make that clear; while Illustrator and InDesign are superior choices for the professional, IG is all about speed and frequency of posting.
So Adobe Spark lets you grab pre-made, somewhat professional looking templates abd make basic edits to colors and typography. It's a much faster and less rigorous workflow than what a designer would go through to create pro content for IG/Twitter.
Re: Show HN: Milkshake – Make Websites from a Phone
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mostly agree with you, but this part is what sells it to me "Turn your link in bio into an Insta website." I could see that catching up, though it would still of course be a limited audience. And also that they did such a nice job with the design and the branding. Would be easier to be more critical if it didn't look that nice.
> Turn your link in bio into an Insta website. What the heck does that even mean?
“Link in bio” is something an Instagram post creator/author says at the end of a post that provides additional context to the photo.
[Photo] “Love my new custom Yeti cooler on road trips like this! Link in bio”
You cannot post URLs in your post, but you can in your bio.
Re: Show HN: Milkshake – Make Websites from a Phone
#75Messaging feedback: try leading with the imagery in your video (i didn't play the video until reading the whole page and still not understanding what the product was):
- shot of instagram profile page, with highlighted link to website - shot of what that website looks like
"oh, that's what this is for." and maybe even more specifically: why do you need one of these? so you can sell shit.
In hindsight, I see how "Insta website" was trying to convey this, but it wasn't clear to me that "Insta" was referring specifically to Instagram /directly/--I thought it was just millenial-hip short of "instant."
And "turn your link in bio into" I at first parsed as "turn your linkedin bio into." Then I was like "oh I guess that's not a typo" but I still wasn't sure which bio it was referring to and it seemed like odd phrasing.
Then I hit "Pick a card. Cards are..." and was like "ugh, yep, this is very much a hip app thing i'm not going to understand." instead of leading with a vocab word and then defining it, just skip the vocab word and use its definition. "Pick a page template. Visitors can swipe between your pages just like an instagram story."
(obviously, i'm an old soul and don't really understand instagram. maybe "card" is already more familiar than "page" for instagram folks?)
good luck.
Re: Show HN: Milkshake – Make Websites from a Phone
#76Honestly surprised there's a "need" for this. This is the kind of thing I would shoot down as a business idea, simply from the standpoint of - nobody needs that. I'm obviously wrong as there are successful examples like universe out there. But boy does it show me that I'm often completely detached from the consumer in these instances.
Fwiw I can remember a time when I was like "Why on earth would anyone want Squarespace when they can host their own site!?" These days I try to assume I probably don't understand! For the start of this product, we had a Design Sprint where we came up with the idea, and then brought in real Instagram users to test the idea on (with very lowfi prototypes) befor actually building!
The number of businesses which need hosting is larger than those who are capable of self-hosting. So Squarespace makes obvious sense.
Through that lens: is the number of businesses/people that need a website builder greater than the number of them with access to a desktop computer? For the US, I'd say no. But in Asia I can see this being the case.
Re: Show HN: Milkshake – Make Websites from a Phone
#77This is high quality product that produces high quality media and, most importantly, it is a breeze to use (proof: https://msha.ke/ronilan/ ) However, “Make Websites from a Phone” is an illusive target. I’ve had a startup circa 2013 with a somewhat similar focus. It got to a working MVP (sort of) and VC term-sheet before it imploded. All that’s left is this video ( https://vimeo.com/68029789 ). There have been multip…
I just wanted to point out that there's a mistake on your website. You write snowboarding is better than skiing. This is clearly false.
I assumed the most glaring mistake people would notice is that the indie grab is with too much hip and too little knee flexion, but your point is also valid.
I just started skiing late this season, so I intend to work on correcting both mistakes in the next one.
Follow me on Instagram! ;)
Re: Show HN: Milkshake – Make Websites from a Phone
#78It's free. What's the business model?
Probably the same as instagram itself: incessant, vapid marketing to teenagers
Re: Show HN: Milkshake – Make Websites from a Phone
#79From the Terms: "You must be 13 years or over to create a Milkshake account. If you are under 18 years of age, you will need the permission of a parent or legal guardian (who is at least 18 years of age) to create a Milkshake account." Seeing that Instagram only requires the age of 13, I wonder if teens will actually bother with permission from their parents/guardians to use Milkshake. Or is this something that will…
>Seeing that Instagram only requires the age of 13, That sounds wrong though
It isn't though. For children under 13, COPPA [0] imposes additional requirements,so most sites have similar terms in their policies. From Instagram's terms of use [1], "You must be at least 13 years old".
[0] https://www.socalinternetlawyer.com/legal-requirements-socia...
Re: Show HN: Milkshake – Make Websites from a Phone
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Turn your link in bio into an Insta website. What the heck does that even mean?
“Link in bio” is something an Instagram post creator/author says at the end of a post that provides additional context to the photo. [Photo] “Love my new custom Yeti cooler on road trips like this! Link in bio” You cannot post URLs in your post, but you can in your bio.
What a weird limitation. Keeps spam down, maybe.