Business Idea: A turn-key system that anyone can use to design, develop and release high quality websites?

[deeptib]

Hello! I've been a full stack web developer for many years. I have developed and released websites designed for clients of all sizes. Small businesses, and large 9k person operations.

What I observed at all these locations is that the website products we released are highly inconsistent. They don't have a consistent level of quality. The product released is unpredictable. The web pages don't adhere to a defined standard.
The design and development process is not defined. Each designer an developer is following their own process when it comes to building the website which creates differing results.
Design thinking is not documented, which leads to the teams reinventing the wheel over and over again.
The team depends on the designers and developers to create their own tools and maintain them. Since the team isn't incentivized to create and maintain these tools, they often fall by the wayside. Which often means that people wing it and create what every they want.

Managers are stressed because they have no control over what is being created. The release and review process of the website is a nail biting endeavor which often uncovers landmines and problems very late in the website building cycle. They often find themselves desperately trying to motivate their people to pull off heroic feats of last minute rework.
Often, the whole team and business is dependent on one or two extraordinary individuals who would destroy the teams ability to produce websites if they ever decided to leave.

And the visionaries ( stakeholders or clients ) who bought the website are dissapointed because the site that was built wasn't the site that was promised. Their vision and strategy got lost in the mad chaotic struggle to develop the site. Everyone was rowing in separate directions.

So my idea to address this is to create a system that ordinary people can follow to achieve a customized, consistent quality website product over and over again. It would have design tooling and developer tooling that would allow any mediocre designer or developer to produce consistent quality products. It would maintain the tooling so that designers and developers can just focus on building products.
The system would also have a way to document design thinking so that could be accessed and used in the future efficiently.
The system would have predictable process which addresses most common problems so there isn't any land mines uncovered on delivery.
And managers would have a way of easily controlling the product output by each of the team members. The system would give them a way to easily onboard new workers.
The visionaries would get a system that reduced the amount of chaos that went into building a website so that the vision never had to be sacrificed in the name of getting something out.

What do y'all think of this idea? Please give me feedback and suggestions.

 

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[Odysseus M Jones]

It's a yes from me!

 

[jasonbuilds]

Hi there,

Also in the software development field. You would get very, very, rich if you could come up with a system that solved all of these landmines that come up in our field!!

You've described so many of the issues that come up in project management in general and it is a pretty big industry. There's lots of money to be made here. Learn as much as you can about the different solutions the industry has come up with (agile methodologies, kanban, scrum, extreme programming, etc) and think about how to differentiate and improve on those, or maybe narrow it down to your niche which I am guessing is web development.

How do you make generic and extensible components that can be used to build up a website -- flexible enough that you could meet any design requirement but rigid enough that a mediocre developer could build something consistent?
How could you make it very easy to avoid bugs while allowing for the flexibility to meet client needs for what they want, when they want it?
How do you make a system that easily produces documentation on as little effort from the developers / designers as possible?
How would you incentivize documentation when features need to be shipped? In my experience, developers and designers hate making documentation and would rather push it off.
How does your system change for an organization of 9000 people versus an organization of 5?

Just some food for thought Even a solution to a subproblem that your system is trying to solve would end up being very valuable!

 

[deeptib]

Hi there,

Also in the software development field. You would get very, very, rich if you could come up with a system that solved all of these landmines that come up in our field!!

You've described so many of the issues that come up in project management in general and it is a pretty big industry. There's lots of money to be made here. Learn as much as you can about the different solutions the industry has come up with (agile methodologies, kanban, scrum, extreme programming, etc) and think about how to differentiate and improve on those, or maybe narrow it down to your niche which I am guessing is web development.

How do you make generic and extensible components that can be used to build up a website -- flexible enough that you could meet any design requirement but rigid enough that a mediocre developer could build something consistent?
How could you make it very easy to avoid bugs while allowing for the flexibility to meet client needs for what they want, when they want it?
How do you make a system that easily produces documentation on as little effort from the developers / designers as possible?
How would you incentivize documentation when features need to be shipped? In my experience, developers and designers hate making documentation and would rather push it off.
How does your system change for an organization of 9000 people versus an organization of 5?

Just some food for thought Even a solution to a subproblem that your system is trying to solve would end up being very valuable!

Thank you for the detailed feedback!

I'm glad to get validation that these are big problems that commonly happen to many teams.

I was envisioning to build this out for a specific niche. Specifically, its for teams that hand code lead generation pages. These pages are hooked up to a CMS like WordPress. These could be internal teams, or external teams. They generally exist because the marketing team wants a deeper level of control, flexibility, convenience, and interoperability with their company's in house web site servers than something like HubSpot can give them.

From my understanding, ideally, lead generation pages should be created quickly ( to meet the demands of a rapidly changing market ), at scale ( for SEO/long tail key words, and for segmentation ), uniformly ( for brand coherence, and ease of maintenance ), just in time, and allow for quick iterations for A/B testing.

But, from my observations, the processes that were being followed created pages that were not uniform, quick to produce, very difficult to scale, hard to maintain, and difficult to iterate for A/B testing.

One thing about these teams was that all the process with in them was accidental, improvisational, created by the front like makers on the fly to just get through the day. Essentially to trick the PM/PO for one more day with a finished ticket.

I created a few theories for what could be done to improve it.

First, I think they should stop copying frameworks from software engineering like Agile or Waterfall to manage the work. Instead, they should use more production line approach. I believe that those frameworks were ill-matched because purpose of these teams wasn't to foster innovation. The purpose was to create a specific product ( webpages ) at a high velocity, uniformly, and with consistent quality. It's easy for factory workers to do their jobs quickly, and consistently because each person does one trainable action over and over again. That's why I think switching over to a more factory style, production line approach would improve velocity, and consistency.

I envision writing and maintaining a playbook that explains the roles, and trains people to follow them.

Second, I theorized that the pages they created were not uniform because the teams had no design system ( a how-to guide for building a web page ) to follow while creating these pages. If they had a design system, they would have a single source of truth for design guidance and vision. If they wanted to iterate on the vision, they could do it in one place, and have that knowledge be disseminated to the whole team at once.

I envision that the product I create would give the companies a good design system and components to start with that only needs cosmetic style changes to match each client's brand. These components can then be recombined with layout code to create new components, or webpages.

Third, I noticed that the pages sales people sold clients were often some wild, vague imagining. I theorized that this was because the sellers ( product owners, and sales people ) were trying to communicate functionality, and visuals to non-technical people with words. This just lead to misunderstandings, and false promises. They were building castles in the air. I theorized that we could fix this by creating concept material prior to the sale, that the sales people and clients could use to visualize an achievable product. My hunch was that, if they had existing concepts and prototypes to sell, then they would have had a good shot at actually ideating something that was possible to create. ( I often noticed that some sales people would adapt to this by selling a frankenstien combination of webpages we had already created, but since the pages that were already released were poor quality- this just led to garbage in garbage out .)

I envision that my company could create the raw building blocks of this concept material and prototypes. I could see the concepts we create as a shared resource, shared among different clients. As trends and the web evolved, we would create concepts to match, and release them. Each client could then make cosmetic styling adjustments to adapt the concepts to their specific needs. I could see us providing a service to do the bulk of the customization as well.

Fourth, I theorized that having an outside, third party develop and maintain the tooling the workers used to create the product was a good idea. This way the workers just focus on production, and the quality of the product isn't contingent on the worker's ability to create and maintain their own tooling.

I envision that my company would be the one to create and maintain this tooling. We would specialize in it, so the client's teams wouldn't have to.

Fifth, I theorize that the product would be improved if the innovation, and pro-typing was separated from the production of the product. Before the workers create the final webpages, they should already have a strong concept, prototype, and strategy to follow. This way, delays due to failing prototypes, experimental concepts, or untested strategies wouldn't risk the team's ability to produce the product in a predictable way.

I envision that most of the testing and risk would be handled by my company.


On the whole, I feel really really sure that I could create a prototype of this system/production line/process. I can build the MVP for the design system, and the base components myself. And, I think I can test it by hiring freelance designers and developers to create webpages following the process.

I have a good idea of the target market- marketers and studios similar to the ones I worked for. I think I have a good idea of who these people are, what they're like, and what they might want. I think they need this product, but I feel like they've never seen something exactly like this before.

I think if they had this, they could downsize the number of people who work on the pages, while keeping the number of web pages they made constant, or improving them. I think they could switch out their devs with less skilled ones.

On the other hand, I'm nervous that I'm being too biased. This is based only on my observations from the places I've worked. I have a hunch that many places work like this. But I have no way to know. Maybe the market for this isn't as big as I think. I just feel like it is because I was exposed to it.

It's a really big idea, its really daunting.

What do you think?

 

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[jasonbuilds]

You clearly put a ton of thought into this! I think you've definitely described a problem that needs solving and there is a market for it. I think I've worked on something somewhat similar for a very large company in their marketing dept and they've invested a lot of money into it.

From my understanding, ideally, lead generation pages should be created quickly ( to meet the demands of a rapidly changing market ), at scale ( for SEO/long tail key words, and for segmentation ), uniformly ( for brand coherence, and ease of maintenance ), just in time, and allow for quick iterations for A/B testing.

Agreed. It's good you know what your product needs to do ideally. Break things down so you can feel less daunted and overwhelmed.

First, I think they should stop copying frameworks from software engineering like Agile or Waterfall to manage the work. Instead, they should use more production line approach. I believe that those frameworks were ill-matched because purpose of these teams wasn't to foster innovation. The purpose was to create a specific product ( webpages ) at a high velocity, uniformly, and with consistent quality. It's easy for factory workers to do their jobs quickly, and consistently because each person does one trainable action over and over again. That's why I think switching over to a more factory style, production line approach would improve velocity, and consistency.

Great observation. You're right that those software engineering approaches were probably not designed for your use case. The right tools for the right job so they say.

Second, I theorized that the pages they created were not uniform because the teams had no design system ( a how-to guide for building a web page ) to follow while creating these pages. If they had a design system, they would have a single source of truth for design guidance and vision. If they wanted to iterate on the vision, they could do it in one place, and have that knowledge be disseminated to the whole team at once.

I envision that the product I create would give the companies a good design system and components to start with that only needs cosmetic style changes to match each client's brand. These components can then be recombined with layout code to create new components, or webpages.

Third, I noticed that the pages sales people sold clients were often some wild, vague imagining. I theorized that this was because the sellers ( product owners, and sales people ) were trying to communicate functionality, and visuals to non-technical people with words. This just lead to misunderstandings, and false promises. They were building castles in the air. I theorized that we could fix this by creating concept material prior to the sale, that the sales people and clients could use to visualize an achievable product. My hunch was that, if they had existing concepts and prototypes to sell, then they would have had a good shot at actually ideating something that was possible to create. ( I often noticed that some sales people would adapt to this by selling a frankenstien combination of webpages we had already created, but since the pages that were already released were poor quality- this just led to garbage in garbage out .)

I envision that my company could create the raw building blocks of this concept material and prototypes. I could see the concepts we create as a shared resource, shared among different clients. As trends and the web evolved, we would create concepts to match, and release them. Each client could then make cosmetic styling adjustments to adapt the concepts to their specific needs. I could see us providing a service to do the bulk of the customization as well.

Fourth, I theorized that having an outside, third party develop and maintain the tooling the workers used to create the product was a good idea. This way the workers just focus on production, and the quality of the product isn't contingent on the worker's ability to create and maintain their own tooling.

Fifth, I theorize that the product would be improved if the innovation, and pro-typing was separated from the production of the product. Before the workers create the final webpages, they should already have a strong concept, prototype, and strategy to follow. This way, delays due to failing prototypes, experimental concepts, or untested strategies wouldn't risk the team's ability to produce the product in a predictable way.

I envision that most of the testing and risk would be handled by my company.

That could fill a very strong need. In my experience, building a website is a completely different skillset from designing an appealing and eye catching layout. Designing is much harder for me than coding is. I can code to a strong design but I cannot design something eyecatching to save my life given a blank piece of paper.

I think high quality design and access to skilled designers is an underrated competitive advantage that companies either don't focus on or don't have the resources to. The marketing organization I worked for literally has an army of designers to enforce consistent branding.

So far I am envisioning a WYSIWYG-like editor with modular and reusable components but with something like Design As A Service (DAAS lol) as a core feature? Maybe providing access to low cost and high quality design skills and designers on a platform that can generate many different variations of web pages. And then built with a marketing platform of sort that can perform SEO, analytics, A/B testing, and what not. Correct me if I am wrong though.

On the whole, I feel really really sure that I could create a prototype of this system/production line/process. I can build the MVP for the design system, and the base components myself. And, I think I can test it by hiring freelance designers and developers to create webpages following the process.

I have a good idea of the target market- marketers and studios similar to the ones I worked for. I think I have a good idea of who these people are, what they're like, and what they might want. I think they need this product, but I feel like they've never seen something exactly like this before.

I think if they had this, they could downsize the number of people who work on the pages, while keeping the number of web pages they made constant, or improving them. I think they could switch out their devs with less skilled ones.

On the other hand, I'm nervous that I'm being too biased. This is based only on my observations from the places I've worked. I have a hunch that many places work like this. But I have no way to know. Maybe the market for this isn't as big as I think. I just feel like it is because I was exposed to it.

It's a really big idea, its really daunting.

What do you think?

I don't think you are being biased. There is a market here. Otherwise design and web agencies that hire both developers and designers would not exist. Poor design, poor specifications, not knowing what kind of people to hire, spending too much money on developers and not enough on strong design skills and project management, are problems a lot of companies faces and are perhaps not even aware of -- even at the most successful companies. Hiring a good developer does not mean you are getting good design. I think maybe your primary value offering would be -- get a strong design and you can outsource coding to your WYSIWYG editor/ code generator thus bringing down cost while getting back strong and valuable branding? And then marketing, SEO and analytics on top? I am just riffing here and I may have diverged from your original vision though.

 

[Shoshin]

Very thoughtful, thanks for sharing!

The company I work for has some sort of "landing page generator" for marketing purposes; it is plugging into the design system (so it maintains consistency), and this design system reads from a set of brand variables (consumed also by other applications); documentation exists both from a design and development point of view (it reads some information from Figma and from Github — the documentation is an abstraction layer that bridges design and development and helps product people/stakeholders navigate the information as well, but the focus are still designers and developers), but only because there are dedicated people to write them. Everything is ready for accessibility and split testing as well. It's pretty neat and fast, but totally tailored to this specific situation and company — therefore, if companies are internally investing in this, which is expensive and prohibitive for other smaller companies, I imagine you're into something indeed! I think AirBnB, Uber and Spotify have documented some of their explorations and solutions in this realm as well.

In this case, the generator isn't a WYSIWYG-like editor, but more like a decision-tree thingie, which could also be something to consider.

Have you take a look into something like ConvertKit for inspiration/analysis? I don't think they're targeting the same people or the same problem necessarily, but their product offering for landing pages and automation might be interesting (I know some other "email marketing" companies offer them too, but for some reason convert kit seems more... niche)

Good luck!