

Show HN: Appsites – Beautiful websites for mobile apps in minutes - ryanmerket
http://appsites.com

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philbarr
It seems to be down at the moment as I keep getting the "We'll be right back!"
message. Possibly the HN effect?

Anyway - that aside this is an absolutely brilliant idea and fixes a real pain
point for me. After spending so long on the app that I've started to hate it,
doing all the screenshots, videos, etc. is bad enough - but then you have to
do the website as well and it just makes you feel like - "urgh, really? CSS
mangling time? Blergh." I would easily pay some of my hard earned indie cash
to just have it done for me. Some thoughts:

\- I'm going to want to integrate whatever site you create into my own
website, so I just want to download whatever you have and throw it into a div
container and have it work. Which means there shouldn't be any/many
dependencies on CSS frameworks / JavaScript etc. It should be clean.

\- If I'm going to give you my cash I'm going to want to be able to choose
from a LOT of different themes so that I can differentiate my app from all the
others out there. I don't mind doing some of the simple customization myself
(colours, text, etc.). I'm not going to want to pay each time if all it comes
down to is changing the logo / picture / text when I could easily do that
myself.

\- I don't know how you plan to monetize, but I wouldn't pay monthly for this.
I just don't churn out apps fast enough (other people might want to though, of
course). But I would be prepared to pay a fair bit each time if it looks good
enough. I'm thinking £5 for the simple demo shown (chow.appsites.com), up to
£25 for something like [http://staticapp.co/](http://staticapp.co/) \- with
all the fancy animations and the like.

Anyway - hope it works out and you do well.

~~~
vvvv
Honest question: Why not us a Wordpress template?

~~~
philbarr
Because that would mean I'd have to use Wordpress. I still want to have enough
control to change what I want to.

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grimtrigger
I was actually of just thinking of building something like this, ha. I like
the idea.

Under the "enter your appstore link" you should have a default that the user
can try. I don't have an app link but I'd still lie to see some output.

~~~
ryanmerket
Thanks, we just put this in the roadmap last night :)

Try any URL to test it out. Here is one:
[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dragon-
story/id513474544?mt=...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dragon-
story/id513474544?mt=8)

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junto
You should have a link to a demo customer, so we can see what the output looks
like.

~~~
ryanmerket
Thanks, we just put that in todo list last night. Try this:
[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dragon-
story/id513474544?mt=...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dragon-
story/id513474544?mt=8)

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montekaka
Nice, I built something like this before too, but with much few feature.

[http://myapppage.herokuapp.com/demo?appID=471966214](http://myapppage.herokuapp.com/demo?appID=471966214)

~~~
sogen
wow, impressed

~~~
montekaka
Thank you for your good word :)

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thomasknoll
What do these look like live? have an example?

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ryanmerket
Yes, check out [http://chow.appsites.com](http://chow.appsites.com)

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PanMan
Is this example removed? Shows just the main page here...

~~~
junto
Seeing the same. Chrome 36.

~~~
ryanmerket
Should be up now.

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underwater
Cool concept but your landing page spends too much time telling me what I'll
get and not why I'd want it.

I tried out the editor by pasting a random app link. It looks pretty neat but
took forever to load. You could also short circuit the reloading when I cancel
out of an edit panel. And fix the settings popup so that it can be dismissed
when viewed in small browser windows.

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supercoder
Doesn't seem to work right now, but reminds me of how app.io started. They
basically created websites for your apps automatically but then I think found
the demand wasn't that great and pivoted to the realtime demo idea.

~~~
ryanmerket
There's actually been quite a few VC backed companies try this model: App.net
and App.io come to mind. The beautiful thing about Appsites is that we won't
be taking money -- from anyone. So we don't have the same pressure to be a
$100M to business. We're perfectly content being a $100k a year business.
We're completely bootstrapped and intend to stay that way. So as long as we're
pulling a profit, we intend to keep our customer's websites running.

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edlea
Unfortunately, it only seems to work for apps that are on the US app store. It
doesn't create a page for apps that are, say, only in the UK app store.

~~~
ryanmerket
Good catch, we'll fix this today.

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webmaven
Very interesting. Does it include A/B testing functionality, or can you
integrate 3rd-party analytics and testing KISSMetrics, Optimizely, etc.?

~~~
ryanmerket
Optimizely is next on our list of integrations to support. Right now we
support Google Analytics, but it's pretty trivial to add more. Any other
services you think we should support?

~~~
webmaven
Userlytics, Mixpanel, maybe?

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jbverschoor
Cool! You should include a landscape theme (game)

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jnye131
Definitely something I'd be interested in also, but sadly seems to be
struggling with the load.

