

Show HN: SimplyBuilt – Makes building a website so easy, your mother could do it - deedubaya
https://www.simplybuilt.com/

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pizza
OT:
[http://www.dilbert.com/strips/comic/2014-08-05/](http://www.dilbert.com/strips/comic/2014-08-05/)

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lazylizard
and [https://xkcd.com/327/](https://xkcd.com/327/) too i suppose..

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klibertp
More like [http://xkcd.com/385/](http://xkcd.com/385/)

Although the Dilbert strip (with a "sexist imbecile" punchline) sums it up
perfectly.

I'm trying hard to find a relevant context where "your mother" phrase would be
appropriate, but so far I'm failing. It's poor marketing at best.

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rhspeer
Oh no, be prepared for some really harsh criticism for the "your mother could
do it". I did that here: [http://www.robertspeer.com/blog/apostrophenow-a-cms-
so-easy-...](http://www.robertspeer.com/blog/apostrophenow-a-cms-so-easy-even-
your-mom-could-use-it), it's not because my mom's dumb, she's kind of a big
deal in the cruise agent world ([http://www.cntraveler.com/travel-tips/travel-
specialists/lin...](http://www.cntraveler.com/travel-tips/travel-
specialists/linda-allen)) and the kind of person I don't mind talking about on
the internet, because she's also a bit of a badass. It's because she's my
harshest critic, in the nicest (ish) way and will not tolerate wp & drupal's
nonsense.

It's not that mother's are ignorant, it's that mother's care about your
success more than your feelings and will tell you drupal & wordpress suck no
matter how much work you put into it. I'm working on a new Apostrophe 2 site
for her now. Mom if you read this it's coming, and it'll be good I promise :)

~~~
deedubaya
My mother wouldn't be able to build a website with traditional tools. With
SimplyBuilt, she could.

My mother falls into this stereotype that everyone is hating on. If anyone
_should_ be offended by this, I should be in that crowd. I'm not offended,
because a) she's not dumb, she just hasn't been given the right tools until
now b) this post isn't really about my mother or someone else's mother.

Good thing I didn't say "a caveman could do it" as I might be in a similar
situation. Except with cavemen. Or people related to cavemen.

~~~
rhspeer
Perhaps this stereotype reflects poorly on both men and women. Mothers may be
more likely to get involved in a new experience and demonstrate their
ignorance, but fathers may be less likely to put themselves through the
feelings of vulnerability required to learn something new.

Nobody likes feeling stupid, I would assume, this is magnified by how one
wants to appear to their children.

My father liked his website but I had to keep it updated for him, he would not
participate in it.

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surreal
This is one of the most effective, informative and attractive landing pages
I've seen as a Show HN. The video in particular is short, to the point and
effective (aside: did you outsource it or produce it yourself? With which
tools?). As a result I'm tempted to give the product a go even though I don't
have a web site I need to build with it.

It's a shame, in a way, that the "your mother could do it" in the title is
what's getting most of the attention here – really shows the importance of
choosing your words carefully.

~~~
dnerris
We did produce this ourselves using ruby on rails and some js. We are still in
beta and are pushing out new updates to the app almost daily. Stay in touch!
TW: @SimplyBuilt

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surreal
Sorry for the ambiguity - I was asking re the video not the web site :)

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mikeycgto
Yes, we produced the video ourselves. Hired outside talent for the voice work
though :)

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surreal
Well done, it's great. With which tools?

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Ad_Nauseam
> your mother could do it

are you implying that my mother's stupid?

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deedubaya
Nope. I'm implying that your mother most likely doesn't have the skills
necessary to build a website either from scratch, or other existing tools.

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groby_b
As opposed to, say, my father?

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sehr
As opposed to say, younger people more familiar with technology.

It's a humorous stereotype, not everything is sexist.

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pessimizer
It's a sexist stereotype, not everything is humorous. My mother read her first
core dump 40 years ago.

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sehr
Seriously? If this was about something physical, then yeah definitely. But
just because it includes a woman, it's sexist? Because I've never heard of an
"older women are bad at technology/moms are bad at technology" stereotype, but
the genderless equivalent is pretty popular.

And if we're going off of anecdotal evidence, neither of my parents are
technically inclined. We're not all privileged enough to have multiple
generations of experience with technology in our family, let alone computers.

~~~
klibertp
> But just because it includes a woman, it's sexist?

No. It's sexist because it assumes something about a group of people based
solely on gender. Or it can be also an example of ageism if both gender and
age are involved.

But let's forget it for now, there's another problem here and that is the
title is just poor writing. If the author aimed for comical value, then he
should have used someone who certainly wouldn't want to create a website. A
cat would work. Caveman, too, really. That's because being comical in this
case is based on a sharp contrast - it's hard to imagine either a cat or a
caveman building a website, and images we tend to see when trying are rather
funny.

By using someone who could want to build a website, and someone almost all
people have deep connection with, you're just dividing your audience into two
groups, those with "website making" someone and those without. What do you
think is to gain from such a division? Maybe a flamewar, at best.

Either way, whether it's just poor writing, poor marketing or sexism, it's
still counter productive. It attracts bad kind of attention and encourages off
topic rants. Don't do this. If you're (the author) not skilled in writing
enough, just find a copywriter who will write the piece for you. Or write it
yourself and send it to all your friends asking for corrections. There _are_
ways of avoiding outcome such as the one in this thread - I see no rational
reason why you would rather write something unknowingly controversial and
detrimental to whatever you want to present to people.

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23andwalnut
Looks good, but it seems like there should be some example sites so we can see
what the service is capable of. I would have liked to try out the editor
too...

~~~
deedubaya
www.simplybuilt.com is build using SimplyBuilt, we'll be adding more examples
soon. Also, you can create an account and use the editor for free! Publishing
for the first month is free too!

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moeedm
No matter how easy these tools get, most people and their mothers probably
won't use them. It will always be used by people who make websites, and even a
lot of those people will opt-in for a more customizable solution they can
control.

~~~
johnkpush
Agreed, most people won't use them. But that doens't mean more people won't
use them. Tools that are easier to use means less technical people can use
them. This is why websites like Weebly, Squarespace, and Simplybuilt exist.
Technical people who build websites will be recommending these tools to those
clients they can't or won't take on.

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filmgirlcw
Like others, I find the title of this thread problematic. I also find your
apparent refusal to understand _why_ it is problematic, even more problematic.
You could have said parents instead of mom. Think about why you didn't.

Got that off my chest, moving on:

The video and landing page are very attractive. The video is solid but too
long. While watching it, I kept mentally inserting edit markers. You can get
this down to 30 seconds and it will be crisper and more to the point. When the
bulk of a video is audio (you're basically just overlaying some audio on top
of AE or Motion, and it looks great, but this isn't a complex story), make
sure you're being as concise as you can be. If I were you, I'd edit the audio
track first, cut some pauses and redundant phrasing, get it to 30 seconds,
then match the animation accordingly. The end result will likely be way more
successful and impressive. Brevity is bliss.

Other thoughts:

* You need examples of other sites, of the site builder tool (and of the data entry form) and of the backend.

* You are going up against Squarespace, Wix, Weebly, Yola and others. Wix, Weebly and Yola also have "free" options. I'm not advocating that you take that approach (on the contrary, I think when you do that it is often a deterrent to viable, paying customers because your main appeal is to the bottom of the barrel), but you need to be able to answer the question, "why not X." This is a saturated market, you need to be able to explain why your solution is better/easier/more-secure/whatever

* I want to know more about the company. I know this is just a Show HN, but before I would plunk down a credit card, I want some sort of idea (even if it is bullshit) of the people behind the site. As someone mentioned upthread, lay people fear losing their stuff if a host goes kaput.

Speaking of which, what is your data portability process?

\- Good early launch page. Solid design. Now make sure you can actually answer
real questions about your product!

~~~
tshile
>Like others, I find the title of this thread problematic. I also find your
apparent refusal to understand _why_ it is problematic, even more problematic.
You could have said parents instead of mom. Think about why you didn't.

Hah. So it's ok to be ageist but not sexist? Think about why you don't see
'parents' as ageist...

This is the problem with today's politically correct climate - it's not about
what the person is intending to say anymore, it's about how people perceive
what is said. And if a group perceives it as offensive then look out, because
it doesn't matter what your intentions were anymore because your intentions
are now being decided by others for you. Any hypocrisy in those people's
stances is obviously to be ignored.

It's an interesting dynamic to watch. It's a shame you have to tip toe so
much, it almost seems to take away from the _actual_ issues these days.

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JoeAltmaier
Cmon, its easy to avoid most of the offenses; just read what you wrote before
hitting 'reply'.

As for ageist, that actually strikes at the heart of the topic. Web facility
is absolutely correlated with age. Its defensible to talk about generations
and technology frankly.

~~~
tshile
It's easy as long as you're taking _everyone 's_ sensitivities into account
_all_ the time.

My point is that the person that has a problem with what they consider obvious
stereotyping that's a problem with discrimination has easily overlooked
something others would consider an obvious stereotype that leads to
discrimination...

If we're going to lambast the OP for being sexist, then this commenter should
be lambasted for being ageist. Yet I bet if you ask the commenter they'll say
they don't behave like an ageist and would rather not be called such...

yet said commenter doesn't bother affording the OP the same level of discourse
or benefit of the doubt.

today's political correctness is full of this sort of hypocrisy.

in my opinion the better option is for people to stop being so sensitive and
to look for actual discrimination instead of perceiving it from people they
know nothing about based on one line on the internet...

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JoeAltmaier
I guess I tried to explain that? Its not ageist to assign technological
facility to generation - its a true correlation.

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filmgirlcw
Exactly. And obviously there are exceptions (many of them), but studies have
conclusively shown both in usage and proficiency that younger generations are
more comfortable with "the web" than generations that came before them. If you
look at Pew's studies and others like it, you can see that the comfort
level/usage patterns for the web (and smartphones, though not cellphones)
mirror the age break points between the Baby Boomers and Gen X (defining Gen X
as 1965-1980, which is how most socialists say culture has determined that
generation) perfectly.

I'm not even saying its a good tagline, I'm simply saying the gendered aspect
is unnecessary because if we're dealing with stereotypes, old[1] people get
confused by the Internet is far more valid than the inference that it's just
older women who are uncomfortable. That's the distinction.

[1] to be clear, I'm not saying anyone not born in Gen X or Gen Y is "old" or
less comfortable online.

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robertpohl
I tried out SimplyBuilt early on and found it very easy and flexible. Love
what you guys have done here!

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rjknight
I don't understand why "your mother" is the reference point here, when "so
easy, someone who works in marketing could do it", since that's more relevant
both in terms of commercial application and likelihood of technical knowledge.

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masnick
SquareSpace seems to be the big leader in the easy-enough-for-mom website
space. To compete, I think you need to really differentiate on features and
also somehow indicate you plan to be around for the long term.

The reason this is important is that long term sustainability is probably the
most important feature for websites for non-nerds. People just don't want to
deal with moving content to a new service, learning a new interface, etc. For
this reason I would only recommend something that looks like it will be around
for 5+ years. I'm confident that SquareSpace is stable and has a business
model that works, whatever other flaws they have.

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ZenoArrow
SquareSpace probably is still the market leader, but Weebly are becoming very
successful (they're YC alum too)...
[http://www.weebly.com/](http://www.weebly.com/)

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lindig
This looks good but I didn't find example pages that would back up the claims.
So: make these more prominent as I would never sign up before seeing these.

~~~
deedubaya
www.simplybuilt.com is actually built using Simplybuilt. We'll be working on
showcase sites soon too!

~~~
lindig
You could stress this in the meantime. I noticed many other comments also
requested a show reel.

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fsniper
Great implementation.

We are using the same concept for our Local targeting basic crm + website
tool. We may get a few lessons from your tool ;)

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GrinningFool
I see elsewhere that you built this site with this tool - does it offer wider
variety? (I personally dislike the trend of lots of scrolling, oversized
pictures that don't give any meaningful information, and little content...)

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adivik2000
Love the video! Would've been great if you had some design showcase of sort.
GL! :)

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dnerris
Thanks for the feedback! Live examples coming soon :)

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gxespino
Needs examples websites - like right now.

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dnerris
We should have some live examples up next week! Fun fact, we built
SimplyBuilt.com using SimplyBuilt.

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pbjorklund
Why price it higher than squarespace?

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zachb
pbjorklund asked a good question. Do you have good answers to what makes you
different from SquareSpace, Weebly, Wix, etc? And why people should give their
money to you instead of them? Because, while your landing page is clean and
informative, your branding doesn't inspire me to believe you're special. If I
were you, I'd leverage my small, scrappy status to show users I can give them
something that the big players in the site-builder market can't.

Also: cool that you designed the landing page using SimplyBuilt! I would
advertise that.

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iliaznk
The video is really cool!

