Website Editing
Limits of Online Sitebuilders
At pageBuzz we try as hard as
possible to not impose limits on editing website pages.
That is a very different
approach than most sitebuilders because they typically have so
called drag and drop interfaces that only allow text in certain
areas, images in certain locations and offer very limited design
potential.
Even worse, they are usually
more expensive and offer no live support at all.
I had the pleasure of trying
out 2 system in the last few 2 days:
Both had similar tools which
allowed the user to change preset elements in a page or template.
There was no question that wix
was far superior to hostamainia in every way but its flash based
interface was clumsy and lacked any real design ability beyond
changing text or images in preset templates.
The reason I bring up both of
these particular websites is because they have both enjoyed so
much press lately and people are signing up and thinking, hey,
this is how websites are built. But that could not be further
from the truth. No real websites are built that way at all.
pageBuzz Drag &
Drop
In fact, these 2 systems are
like children toys compared to what the pageBuzz.com website
building system offers its customers.
When we talk about our Drag & Drop HTML Editor we litteraly mean drag and drop.
You click on an image or text
area and drag it where you want it. You want to move it offer
half and inch, you can, you want to move it 6 inches on a
diagonal, you can. There are no preset places for you to place
content in a page.
You can even drag elements
over each other, so text can be over a picture or 2 pictures can
overlap each other. There are no design limits of the pages, you
put everything exactly where you want it and how you want it.
That is how a website should
be built, the way you want it. Not the way we did it for you and
only allow you to change the verbiage in our design.
Compare to
Hostamania & Wix.com
Hostamania and Wix both have
drag and drop editors, but when you add a photo, you can only
drag the photo into a designated area on the page.
This type of website building
is not really website building, it is very similar to our
BumbleBeeWorks.com platform from 2003 except it has a cleaner and
more updated interface than we did some 10 years earlier.
I don't know what the real
value is to a business owner to have a preset, not so great
design that they can only change the text and one photo on a page.
I know from experience that
our customers grew tired of that type of page building within our
first year of doing business with them. We had to upgrade to
something more comprehensive to keep them as customers.
But then
again, we are charging for our service while wix and hostamania
both offer free hosting to lure people in and try to get them to
buy expensive packages.
So their market and a big part
of their hype is to people that will never spend any money on a
website and will never make any money in business. hey cater to
people that don't really need websites, people that build
senseless pages and could not care less what they end up looking
like.
So for them, their idea of
drag and drop editing is fine.
But at pageBuzz.com
where we specialize in working with business owner, selling
online and getting value from websites this wont work.
We can't give our
customers a preset page, and ask them to change one picture,
change the text and be happy with their website.
Today People Expect
More
Today, website hosting
customer expect more than a myspace or facebook page. They don't
want a website that has a form where they type in their name,
address and phone number and that is the website.
They want to add content,
videos, slideshows, write pages, integrate social networks, talk
about their business and build website traffic
that will generate income.
You just can't do that with a
canned page that has no information other than what you add to a
single text pox in the page.
We have been down
this road before.
We learned the hard way that
people would not be satisfied with those types of webpage editing
limits. We learned, because after building the same type of
system, our customers told us that it sucked and while it did
what the wanted initially now they grew board of it and really
can't use the website to highlight their business properly online.
So we scrapped it and made an
entirely new platform at pageBuzz.com which was designed not to
impose any design limits.
A fully data driven system so
any shopping cart design was possible, so any page design was
possible but still keeping in mind that our customers are not
webmasters and need an easy simple interface to use to build
those pages.
When pageBuzz was designed it
was not our first try, not even our second try, we had been doing
this for nearly 7 years already and we knew what we needed to
make sure we could keep everyone happy for another 7, 14 or 21
years.
So rather than
creating templates that would be dated in a few years, we
added layout builders so users could create their own
templates. Rather than limiting shopping carts to one design,
we build a system that is completely data driven, so there is
no design it will not support.
Even 10, 20 or 30 years from
now when designs and websites are very different, our system will
still work, because we simply pull data and populate templates
just like mega sites such as amazon. ebay and walmart. Their back
end is all data driven and they can change their entire website
look in minutes without impacting any of the pages and data on
the pages.
That is important for those
companies because they plan to be running that website 10, 20 and
30 years from now.
Our system was built the same
way with the same premise, we want our customers to be flexible,
fluid and have the ability to grow change and evolve as time goes
on.
We could not have done that
with they types limited of page editing at wix and hostamania
because those page designs are so deeply integrated into the page
editors. They would need to build a whole new platform to have
the flexibility in webpage design that pageBuzz offers.
Making Rookie
Mistakes
I think Wix and Hostamainia
are making the same rookie mistakes we made back in 2003-2004. We
though we knew what people wanted only to have those same people
tell us we were wrong.
I believe anyone that uses
either of those 2 website building systems and then tries
pageBuzz.com will quickly realize how different and how much more
they can do with ours. They will see how childish the other
systems are and ask why anyone would use them.
When they compare some
of our website building tools like:
With tools that they
offer:
They are find for a personal
home page, a non important website or just to play online and see
what is available. But neither of those companies really provide
what a business needs.
That is why companies like
ebay buy system like Magento which is an ecommerce platform.
Because all these wannabe web hosts like Hostamaina will never
have what it takes to understand what businesses need, what they
want and what ecommerce is all about.
They spend more money
advertising than building tools for customers and that means they
are popular but fall very short on design functions.
So companies like ebay and
pageBuzz which years of experience working with people that sell
products concentrate on building tools, programs and platforms
that seller can use. And when all the hype about wix.com and
Hostamania is over, those suckered in by all the press will start
looking for something that actually works for their business.
You don't hear any hype about
ebay and magento, or pageBuzz and our shopping system, but rest
assured, it works better than anything you will find at wix or
hostamainia and will be around far longer.
Of course those companies
could rebuild like we did, like ebay does and like the rest of
the people that already tried that route. But eventually, people
will want more and unless they can offer more than a fill in the
blank website design, they wont last long at all. At least not in
the paid hosting market.
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