Wappler : Thoughts About Designers, Branding and Marketing

Wappler General
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Hello there,

The following is just my thoughts and I understand Wappler might not see things the same way I do. But maybe this will spark some ideas / thoughts. About me: I’m solid with HTML, CSS and a beginner level with JS. I work in ux design, marketing and content creation (graphics, animations, sounds). Because of this, I feel like I can look at your software from both perspectives (dev/design).

A lot of tools in website creation space (webflow for example) look and feel very nice but seem to want to shy away from the code. I don’t think this a right way to go about it. A designer should be able to work visually with a drag and drop editor without touching the code, but the same should go for a programmer that wants to work with a code editor. Instead of shying away from the code, designers will have an opportunity to learn programming. And when developers work more closely with designers, they would learn and understand more about the design practices, importance of UX etc. I think Wappler could achieve this. Be the “translator” between designers and developers. So instead shying away from each other, let’s learn from each other and evolve together.

As of now thought, I feel like your branding and marketing is really lacking. Just by looking at the website: Wappler logo doesn’t look professional, some of the color choises on the website are not good, spacing between images / buttons looks off in many places. Youtube channel needs a lot of work (just look at the thumbnails of the videos). Website showcases are not impressive. And loads of other stuff. Now if I see all this, you can bet that other designers see this as well. And I can imagine that a designer who doesn’t (yet) understand programming thinks like this: “These people are selling me a “no-code” solution, but they don’t seem to care about designing. Looks like they don’t really appreciate what I do, so this is not a product for me.”

Now developing the product is important of course, but a great software without a proper branding and marketing is not enough. You have a great product, right vision but you are not really showing it. Make content that demonstrates softwares value: showcase interesting websites, flashier websites, more artistic websites, fun, useful and interesting webapps, etc. etc. Or how about a fun Youtube marketing campaign that has a designer and a developer working, joking and teaching Wappler together? Or if you are going for more “professional” and less “casual” branding, then you could work on making your videos look/feel higher quality. So many things you could do.

This is still a small market so more push on the marketing and designing side would give Wappler a lot more visibility and desirability.

Just some thoughts from me. Sorry for mistakes in spelling, english is not my native language!

Regardless, I think you have a great product and I’m looking forward to exploring it more.

Thank You,
Rocket

1 Like
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I really appreciate hearing your opinion @Rocket. I have often wondered if there are design experts doing work on Wappler since I haven’t come across many expertly designed websites built with Wappler nor do I see participation from designers or design related topics on this forum.

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Have you checked the Showcase category in our community:
Showcase - Wappler Community ?

There are really nice examples of complex dynamic websites, with complex CMS systems behind, built entirely in Wappler :slight_smile:

Also what does "expertly designed websites" mean? The design of a website is a really subjective topic :slight_smile: and with some basic CSS knowledge you can make anything, there are no limits of what you can design.

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I agree, there are a lot of really nice websites designed with Wappler :slight_smile:

Maybe it’s that I’m not seeing the types of web apps I’m interested in. I see a lot of informational websites. What I’d see built by Wordpress or a similar CMS but I’m interested to see webapps being built like Twitter, Pinterest, Product Hunt, etc.

I don’t see many of those yet and therefore don’t see the types of UX/UI patterns I associate with them.

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Just to clarify; I’m not questioning Wappler as a product. I know you can build pretty much everything, the product is wonderful. That’s why I feel there is a great opportunity here. The point I was trying to make here is about the marketing and branding aspect. Showing, not telling. Creating hype around your product. Showing it’s power and making it known. But I’m certainly not trying to tell you how to run your business or trying to disrespect anybody here. This is just something I feel looking from a designers point of view.

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While I agree the marketing aspect of Wappler can be done better, I also keep in mind that the product is actually still in its infancy as it is really only a year and a half old. So much has changed and there is still so much to come that I feel the team is on the right path of getting things right in the product first and then hit the marketing trail full speed.

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