Ask HN: Why does mediocre design succeed (companies like Weebly)?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4683266

by thisisdallas • 14 years ago

10 10 14 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Weebly has over 12 million customers but their site templates are pretty bad. Are potential customers attracted to the service because of its ease of use or specific features? Is there a large population of people and businesses who are solely focused on having a website up and running no matter what it looks like?

I have nothing at all against Weebly, I am sure they are a great company doing great things, I am just curious what makes companies like that successful.

SoHoNoVo• 14 years ago

The "non-tech" people (ie find FTP difficult) I know personally that have used Weebly tell me they like it because they found it's very easy to put a site together and manage it.

Most aren't "in love" with the program, but they found it easy to get their website put together and running, and figure that if they're looking for their next step they'll just hire someone to build it.

The line I get from most people are along the lines of "it was just... easy... and it worked..."

madsushi• 14 years ago

We call this the "PHP effect". //for the record, I love PHP

AznHisoka• 14 years ago

Because great design inherently doesn't solve any pains for people. Getting a website up and running in 5 minutes does though.

j_s• 14 years ago

Content > Presentation

benologist• 14 years ago

People don't give a shit how you lay your pixels out as long as they work as advertised.

bravoyankee• 14 years ago

Because people actually know about Weebly, and the interface doesn't scare them away with complexity. I think it's as simple as that.

On those terms, Weebly is quite exemplary.

padseeker• 14 years ago

Web developers and designers have a tendency to be egocentric about this sort of stuff. We say stuff to ourselves like "How can anybody use this crappy product? You mean like IE over Chrome or Firefox?". The answer is if you don't know any better?.....

To answer your question you need consider the following:

1. Ease of use can be more important that exquisite design - Average person does not value design as much as other things such as ease of use.

$0 site that is easy to build/update and done in hours/days > $$$ for beautifully designed by some flaky web designer/developer that takes 4 months to go live

2. Weebly's Design isn't that bad considering how flexible and forgiving the product has to be.

3. Please show me an example of a comparable product to Weebly that is as easy to use and get live but is significantly better designed?

If such a product exists then the answer might be marketing. Rob Walling of Startups for the Rest of Us Market > Marketing > Design > Product (functionality)

It's sad as a developer to see that Design and Functionality come after market/marketing. It also seems to contradict a bit of my point about ease of use for non techies being a reason for Weebly's success, but if they market well, and it's free then they have a huge leg up.

Really considering what it is Weebly aint too shabby. It's also amazing how many crappy sites there are out there that people continue to utilize. I did some cold calls for my startup idea and I thought the people with crappy sites would certainly get on board, but it didn't quite work out that way.

harmon_michael• 14 years ago

wix is just as easy to use and slightly better designed

1123581321• 14 years ago

Many of Weebly's customers would otherwise have a terrible Intuit or YellowPages site. For them, it's a big improvement.

true_religion• 14 years ago

> Is there a large population of people and businesses who are solely focused on having a website up and running no matter what it looks like?

Yes. Any business that does more of its work offline than online, is just putting up an online site for convenience.

Ask HN: Why does mediocre design succeed (companies like Weebly)?

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