Ask HN: One Weebly To Rule Them All?

#1

Post by charuhas » Mon, Feb 16, 2009, 8:44 PM UTC

We just launched Electobot (www.electobot.com), which provides turnkey Web sites to political campaigns. It's basically "barackobama.com for local candidates."

It's simpler than a Weebly or Homestead in that the site structure and content are ready-made. A customer sends Electobot a photo, edits some text, chooses a look/layout, and he's done.

We believe that Electobot is where Web development will eventually end up, with customers in a specific vertical market getting a ready-made hosted site that's tailored to their business.

There won't be One Weebly To Rule Them All. Instead, each vertical market will have its own Electobot that provides easily-updated Web sites for a monthly fee. There will be one for doctors' offices, one for building contractors, one for restaurants, etc.

What do you think? Is this assumption correct?

Re: Ask HN: One Weebly To Rule Them All?

#2

Post by pclark » Mon, Feb 16, 2009, 9:07 PM UTC

how different do you think a doctors surgery and a building contractors website needs are?

Why not just allow the user to select his business type, and offer a default template of content and items -- and they can customize it some more.

Re: Ask HN: One Weebly To Rule Them All?

#3

Post by charuhas » Mon, Feb 16, 2009, 9:14 PM UTC

pclark wrote: post #2

how different do you think a doctors surgery and a building contractors website needs are? Why not just allow the user to select his business type, and offer a default template of content and items -- and they can customize it some more.

Pretty different, actually. In fact, podiatrists and ear/nose/throat practices, plumbers and trim carpenters may need different templates.

We found that when we began talking to local citizens advocacy groups. We initially thought that they could use the same architecture/structure we use for political campaigns (they're campaigns too, right?), but found out they need a different site template.

Good question, pclark--thanks for responding.

Re: Ask HN: One Weebly To Rule Them All?

#4

Post by trickjarrett » Mon, Feb 16, 2009, 10:07 PM UTC

I like the concept, and the price is on point so far as I can estimate, it's pricey enough to make good profit for you all, but low enough that some individual bootstrapping his campaign can afford it.

The site does a great job of telling me what you do, but not a great way of how you do it. Give me a breakdown of costs between some firm I might hire and using you guys. Etc.

I'm not sure I agree with your concept of a targeted web development app, since it's what I do for a living, but I wish you guys all the best.

Re: Ask HN: One Weebly To Rule Them All?

#5

Post by charuhas » Mon, Feb 16, 2009, 11:04 PM UTC

trickjarrett wrote: post #4

I like the concept, and the price is on point so far as I can estimate, it's pricey enough to make good profit for you all, but low enough that some individual bootstrapping his campaign can afford it. The site does a great job of telling me what you do, but not a great way of how you do it. Give me a breakdown of costs between some firm I might hire and using you guys. Etc. I'm not sure I agree with your concept of…

There will always be a market for custom-built sites. But for folks like local candidates and your dentist, they can really use something off-the-rack and affordable.

For example, most of the local candidates I've seen get volunteers to build their sites for free...and get what they pay for. Very few can afford the $10K it takes to get a decent site custom-built.

Have you thought about picking a vertical, creating an amazingly excellent site to serve it, then selling that site a thousand times with different skins? I used to do custom Web devt. too, and the sell-do cycle drove me nuts.