

Strikingly (YC W13) Builds Compelling Mobile-First Web Experiences - teng
http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/13/strikingly/

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callmeed
As someone who's been in the web/cms space for a while, I personally think
it's a mistake to attack a general feature (mobile, one-page, etc.) first. I
get that YC goes after "ambitious startups" but I much prefer going after an
industry/niche first (photographers, restaurants, lawyers).

Photographers care most about their images/galleries. Restaurants need menus.
Real estate agents need listings. All of them need different types of forms.

The trap with going general first is you'll either have to (a) build a
"kitchen sink" product with features for everyone or (b) have a product that
many industries don't want to use because it doesn't have NICHE FEATURE X.

When you go industry first, it's easier to get traction and recommendations.
It's easier and cheaper to advertise to your audience. You can guerrilla
market yourself at trade shows and find "industry rockstars" to champion you.
You can totally dominate that industry and have a nice "lifestyle business" or
simply use it as the first pin in a bowling pin strategy [1]. For example,
we're pretty deep into the photography space and now we're taking one product
and going after Architects.

Obviously Weebly and Squarespace have had success being general-purpose. So,
now you're basically competing with them + wordpress with your main advantage
being "mobile first and responsive". You say your format is suitable for
small-businesses. I'm sorry, but in my experience that's not enough to get
people to switch.

We've designed/sold/deployed/hosted websites for a few thousand
wedding/portrait photographers plus almost the same amount of high-end
commercial photographers. Don't take this the wrong way (your designs are
beautiful) but I can't see any of my clients jumping ship to a product like
this. (FWIW, most clients we lose go to WordPress or just go out of business).

[1] <http://cdixon.org/2010/08/21/the-bowling-pin-strategy/>

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haishachen
Great point about targeting the niche markets. We kept the product general
enough so that our users could help us find the niche. So I agree with this
point completely, and since we have some data points now, we're going to start
focusing on specific verticals.

Regarding to your second point about getting people to switch. You are right,
"mobile first and responsive" itself is not enough, but simplicity is. From
our user interviews, we've found that the single most important reason they
switch over to Strikingly is because it takes less time to set up and manage.
Also, they don't need to worry about how an edit on the web will look on
mobile. The key is saving their time. The majority of our customers have
actually switched from an existing website builder or CMS to Strikingly. As
for why mobile is important, I think you'll agree that any website today
should be mobile optimized. With the growth trajectory of mobile traffic, the
importance of mobile is going to precede web in two, at most three, years. The
question is what "mobile optimized" means. Taking a complicated desktop
website and try to fit it onto a small screen is hard, but the other way
around is not (Fred Wilson has an article here:
<http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2012/12/rethinking-mobile-first.html>). Mobile is a
catalyst for a web design revolution, with simpler and more intuitive designs.
This trend is also happening on the desktop web, and that's why more people
are using the one-page design. Mobile first is both a mentality and design
shift, and eventually, desktop web design will have to assimilate the mobile
experience. Our users agree with this philosophy of ours.

Of course, we are also working on simplifying the whole onboarding process.
Some interesting updates will be released soon. Thanks for your feedback!

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10dpd
I was under the impression that Bootstrap enables a responsive design out of
the box? Is this essentially a standard CMS running Bootstrap backed up by
solid design?

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teng
At our core, that's what we are - an easy CMS built on top of a responsive
framework. But we think responsive design is more than just media queries,
it's also about how content affects the browsing experience. A Wordpress theme
running Bootstrap may be responsive, but the standard WP content structure is
often too clunky on a small screen.

So we're starting with the mobile experience and bringing it to bigger
screens. In the process, we learned from our customers that the simpler
mobile-first format is particularly suitable for certain small businesses
(contractors, restaurants, startups, etc) and lowers their barrier to get
online. We'd like to write an article to share our findings!

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WrkInProgress
Their own website doesn't work in portrait mode on my Android device (HTC One
X using Chrome) and the logo doesn't load even when I rotate the phone into
landscape mode.

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lux
Indeed, you can't even scroll horizontally on iPhone either, so this is your
mobile experience:

<http://imgur.com/cu0fokf>

I'm sure this will be fixed soon, and they are just launching now, but it is
kinda funny.

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teng
Yup, it's fixed now. A little speed bump on launch day. :)

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aholmes
It certainly was a "striking" mobile experience - I struck my phone repeatedly
in frustration :)

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ridruejo
The product is awesome and I hope every restaurant out there kills their
Flash-based site and replace them with this. Nothing more frustrating than
trying to navigate 90s websites with your phone ...

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haishachen
Thanks! Check out this restaurant site built with our product. Let us know
what you think. <http://www.watercressbali.com/>

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bradleybuda
The sample sites look great on my Nexus 4 - nice to see a mobile experience
that isn't iPhone-only. Great work guys!

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teng
Thanks! We definitely want to craft a consistent experience on all devices.

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bdirgo
Winter '13? I thought summer '13 just went out.

