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Launch HN: Weweb.io (YC W21) – Create websites visually using JAMstack tools

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Re: Launch HN: Weweb.io (YC W21) – Create websites visually using JAMstack tools

#21

Post by pembrook »

I think you’ve definitely identified the problem correctly. I’ve complained about this problem before on HN, since it’s the only place where people are wise enough to not get swept up in the latest hype train.

If you want to do any regular content marketing/blogging, custom landing pages for SEO, a/b test copy, or even just update the design of your site...Jamstack paired with an enterprisey headless CMS is just an absolute freaking nightmare. I like to joke that Jamstack is the fastest way to build a site that nobody ever visits.

Literally every Saas company I work with has switched their marketing site over to Webflow for this reason (especially since most Saas companies get a majority of inbound leads through content).

And they seem to be pretty happy with it! So I think you’re definitely on the right path.

I have none of the traditional armchair critiques for you. Just keep doing what you’re doing! Marketing sites should be easily controlled by marketing people.

Re: Launch HN: Weweb.io (YC W21) – Create websites visually using JAMstack tools

#24

Post by tobr »

raphael-gold wrote: post #18
tobr wrote: post #15

I feel like you wrote a better pitch for it here than on the website. It’s certainly a pain I’ve ran into many times: building on tech that devs prefer leads to a situation where only devs can make certain changes, something they often don’t enjoy doing, while other team members wish they could just do it quickly themselves. Frustration all around. It sounds like a thing that should be marketed to jamstack developers…

that's interesting, we actually have a real difficulty here because our buyers are either marketers or developers. As the problem we are trying to solve is shared between them, both are looking out for solution and we are having a hard time positioning our marketing website's communication because of this. Also, thanks for sharing your impression on the video! When you say "if their site is not set up in just the rig…

> When you say "if their site is not set up in just the right way to fit weweb", do you mean that it feels like the editor won't allow you to build custom layouts that fit with any design?

I find it a little hard to put this succinctly, but basically as a dev I get a little nervous seeing all the features in the UI. In my experience any complex editor like that has to be designed around a bunch of assumptions about what kind of site you’re editing, and almost every slightly complex real world site will have aspects that break those assumptions. It could something subtle, like confusion around terminology (imagine being a non-technical editor for a book binding website, and seeing terminology about “bindings”), or features that look like they should do something but for whatever reason don’t have any effect on the components in use. The more complex the editor is, the more likely that certain things will cause confusion when they meet the real world.

Re: Launch HN: Weweb.io (YC W21) – Create websites visually using JAMstack tools

#25

Post by raphael-gold »

koolakalaban wrote: post #22

Very cool! It seems like this is more the way things are moving. Just out of curiosity, how did you get the big name companies on your landing page to use your product if you just now launched?

we actually "privately launched" 18 months ago and we knew some people in these companies who had the problem we are trying to solve - so they were willing to try us out. They gave us tons of feedback, we improved the product thanks to that and we now felt like it was a good time to launch publicly and get more feedback from you folks :)

Re: Launch HN: Weweb.io (YC W21) – Create websites visually using JAMstack tools

#26

Post by mekkkkkk »

raphael-gold wrote: post #19
mekkkkkk wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When it comes to the per-visit limits, what exactly counts as a visit? Being crawled and indexed can quickly consume hits if they are simply renderings of the page. Even the business tier seems really limited if that is the case. Especially for 100$ a month.

that's a good point, we are currently discussing this with our early adopters to find the right balance. We might increase this per-visit limits. What would be a fair limit for the business plan according to you?

If you could use heuristics to discard automation such as search engine indexing and open graph lookups, then the limit is probably fine. I'm not sure I'm a fan of the pricing model in general though.

If I were you, I'd look into smart caching, traditional (high and scaling) bandwidth limits, and instead applying tier limits on updates/edits/data pulls. More user friendly, more generous for smaller projects and slightly less open for exploits. In the current model (with no heuristics), you could shut down one of your customers in 5 min just using curl.

Re: Launch HN: Weweb.io (YC W21) – Create websites visually using JAMstack tools

#27

Post by raphael-gold »

jerrygoyal wrote: post #23

As far as I understood I could use both drag and drop editor as well as code. If so, how's it handling css? do you handover tailwind classes/bootstrap/just vanilla css.

we handle CSS at component level, this means that you can add custom css for every element or "section" (UI block) in the site but not at site level. If you import your custom component it can have its own CSS. We don't support adding CSS at site level yet, but so far users didn't ask for it too often.

Re: Launch HN: Weweb.io (YC W21) – Create websites visually using JAMstack tools

#28

Post by raphael-gold »

pembrook wrote: post #21

I think you’ve definitely identified the problem correctly. I’ve complained about this problem before on HN, since it’s the only place where people are wise enough to not get swept up in the latest hype train. If you want to do any regular content marketing/blogging, custom landing pages for SEO, a/b test copy, or even just update the design of your site...Jamstack paired with an enterprisey headless CMS is just an a…

yes, that's a pattern that we saw as well! Teams migrating to webflow or wordpress to give back the autonomy to marketers. We also saw teams willing to migrate to the Jamstack from squarespace sites or webflow sites but not doing it because it would mean that marketers would lose their autonomy on the front-end. We felt these pattern should be broken and that Jamstack should be "marketer friendly" as well :)

Re: Launch HN: Weweb.io (YC W21) – Create websites visually using JAMstack tools

#29

Post by raphael-gold »

tobr wrote: post #24
raphael-gold wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's interesting, we actually have a real difficulty here because our buyers are either marketers or developers. As the problem we are trying to solve is shared between them, both are looking out for solution and we are having a hard time positioning our marketing website's communication because of this. Also, thanks for sharing your impression on the video! When you say "if their site is not set up in just the rig…

> When you say "if their site is not set up in just the right way to fit weweb", do you mean that it feels like the editor won't allow you to build custom layouts that fit with any design? I find it a little hard to put this succinctly, but basically as a dev I get a little nervous seeing all the features in the UI. In my experience any complex editor like that has to be designed around a bunch of assumptions about w…

these are definitely real life example we experience every day. It is hard to draw the line between simplicity and customisability. For this our biggest inspiration is Figma. It's amazing to see non-designers drawing things in Figma without getting too many frustration together with designers doing complex and very precise designs & design systems without feeling limited.

Their interface feels easy to start with but can take you very far if you need customization and scalability.

We are far from what they achieve, but that's where we'd love the end up. :D

Re: Launch HN: Weweb.io (YC W21) – Create websites visually using JAMstack tools

#30

Post by raphael-gold »

raphael-gold wrote: post #13
bwghughes-fth wrote: post #12

I'm afraid Editor doesn't load in Safari. I get a 403 when loading the editor.

whoops! yes sorry the editor only works with chromium based browsers. We will add a message to let users know!

we are also planning to expand support to other browser engines as we grow :)
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