Unhappy with your company’s corporate website? Within two days you can present a completely new site, designed to your specifications. That is the vision of Israeli start-up Websplanet.
There are currently two ways of building a company’s website. One is to hire a designer who works from a shelf program with fixed templates. These templates cannot include every detail the customer wants to insert into the website; they are a common denominator for the largest number of users.
Most large companies are not interested in such a website, and opt to hire a company that will design a unique site for them. The process is prolonged and expensive; it takes 30-60 workdays by designers and programmers at a cost of $2,000 per project. Another problem is that the site is inflexible once it has been put up. A customer can update the site’s content, but cannot change its design, except by repeating the arduous and costly design process.
Websplanet has developed a technology that offers a third way: an individual design at low cost; or if you prefer, the opposite - a very sophisticated and flexible template. Today, building specialized websites is carried out as follows: first, the customer and designer together build the desired site; then, the designer converts the picture into HTML template, telling the computer where, for example, to place the 2-sq.cm. blue square. In the next stage, the task is handed over to a programmer, who patiently tells the computer that the blue square is actually a button that, when pressed, sends the surfer to another webpage. Each of these steps creates a bottleneck, and constitutes most of the overhead of website design companies.
Websplanet’s method eliminates all these design stages. After the graphic concept is approved, the designer “glues” the graphics onto Websplanet’s platform to create a fully dynamic website within hours, rather than after days or weeks of design.
The designer only has to tell the computer is what the design is meant to achieve. For example, if the designer wants to create a menu, he or she opens the “menu” window in Websplanet’s software, and receives a request for a description of the button. The designer will insert the design instructions and location of each button, in HTML, into the request window. The software will identify these buttons as menu buttons. After receiving the instructions, the software will on its own know to ask which webpage each button should send a surfer, and what text should appear in each button. The customer can later change these things on his or her own.
The example of the menu is fairly simple, but makes the point clear. Websplanet does work by design templates, but according to common functional modules. The company has identified more than 80 modules, including menu, FAQs, regularly updated news pages, and products catalogues. It allows the designer to choose almost any design, provided that it is connected to one of the modules. In this way, the designer can turn his or her vision into an active site without using design templates.
“Globes”: Are there other solutions on the market that try to find the golden mean between templates and unique features?
Websplanet CEO Guy Karolizki: “Our main competitors are among the sophisticated template programs, including Sitegalore and CM4all, but our software is the only one that enables a designer with HTML know-how to create a dynamic and flexible site on his or her own, without the help of a programmer.”
Is your software really able to provide an answer the way a unique site can? There are still limitations.
“There have to be limitations, but, in general, we offer a choice from a range of functions, and almost infinite freedom of design. We’ve reached the point where our templates cover 90% of what companies want to do.”
Websplanet has invested $200,000 in its product to date, and is in the process of raising an additional $700,000 from private investors. “The current financing round is intended to carry out deals we’ve already signed,” says Karolizki. “We believe that we won’t need additional external financing. We have a little extra.”
Your tool renders the programmer redundant. Why should website design companies want that? After all, you’re taking away their work?
Websplanet VP business development Moshe Livne: “Website builders have costly programmers on staff, and they lose potential customers because of the cost of the product. First of all, our product will save website builders a huge amount. After the product becomes the standard, it might cause market prices to fall, but to a level that will be offset by savings.
“Unquestionably, the market needs to be taught a great deal. Nevertheless, we’re already working with two leading Israeli companies, and we have business reps all over the world. We’re seeing companies gladly adopting out tools. We know for a fact that they sometimes drag things out with their customers, so the customers won’t know how quickly and easily they finished the task, which ought to have taken a month or more.”
Is there a risk that after a customer learns to use the tool, he or she will hire a designer of thier own, and forego the services of website builders?
Karolizki: “We expect that customers will continue to use website builders because of the designs they offer. We have another product for the home and small-business market, based on the same principles, but without using HTML. This product already seriously competes with free and for pay products, but we believe we have the winning product, because of its ease of use and flexibility.”
How will you market your products?
“We market the product for the professional market to web design companies. Each time a company puts a website designed with our product on air, it pays us a monthly royalty fee.
“We’ll market our product mainly for home use through Internet service providers (ISPs). It’s normal practice for ISPs worldwide to offer e-mail and personal web-hosting services for its subscribers. We already have an agreement with a commercial Israeli company, which is not an Internet company, but offers its customers a home page as part of its product.”
Who are the potential buyers for a company like yours?
Livne: “We’re already holding talks for strategic partnerships with a number of telecommunications and web storage companies. In principle, we didn’t found this company to sell it. We’re built is such a way that we don’t have to depend on being sold. We feel there’s an opportunity here to build a monster company that could achieve a large exit within a year.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes.co.il - on December 14, 2005