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

Posted by thisisdallas on Monday October 22, 2012 @10:25AM
from the ask-hn dept.

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.

( 10 comments | 10 points | on HN )

Re:Ask HN: Why does mediocre design succeed (companies like ... by SoHoNoVo on Monday October 22, 2012 @10:49AM (#4683366)

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..."

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Re:Ask HN: Why does mediocre design succeed (companies like ... by madsushi on Monday October 22, 2012 @11:27AM (#4683542)

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

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Re:Ask HN: Why does mediocre design succeed (companies like ... by AznHisoka on Monday October 22, 2012 @12:21PM (#4683865)

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

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Re:Ask HN: Why does mediocre design succeed (companies like ... by benologist on Monday October 22, 2012 @01:04PM (#4684132)

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

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Re:Ask HN: Why does mediocre design succeed (companies like ... by padseeker on Monday October 22, 2012 @01:39PM (#4684284)

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.

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Re:Ask HN: Why does mediocre design succeed (companies like ... by harmon_michael on Thursday October 25, 2012 @03:23AM (#4696676)

wix is just as easy to use and slightly better designed

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Re:Ask HN: Why does mediocre design succeed (companies like ... by 1123581321 on Monday October 22, 2012 @02:09PM (#4684459)

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

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Re:Ask HN: Why does mediocre design succeed (companies like ... by true_religion on Wednesday October 24, 2012 @05:40AM (#4692268)

> 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.

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Re:Ask HN: Why does mediocre design succeed (companies like ... by j_s on Monday October 22, 2012 @12:32PM (#4683942)

Content > Presentation

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Re:Ask HN: Why does mediocre design succeed (companies like ... by bravoyankee on Monday October 22, 2012 @01:18PM (#4684209)

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.

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