Why DIY Tools were Rejected by the Market?
“With the web design service industry a $20.1B market in the US alone, and more than 16M new websites added every month, who creates these millions of new sites? More than 70% of websites are created in a professional process by developers using pro-developers platforms. These B2B solutions offer tools for building advanced websites including custom design and CMS (Content Management Systems), such as WordPress, Joomla and Drupal.”
While 70% of websites are built by developers, agencies, and freelancers, only 3% of websites are built by small-businesses with self-serve DIY tools like Squarespace, Wix, and Weebly. The DIY model has barely putting a dent in the website building market, despite aggressively building out features for over a decade.
Why do businesses still depend on internal teams or service providers, ie agencies and freelancers, to build websites for them? Can’t these feature-rich self-serve platforms provide powerful, easy-to-use tools businesses need to build a site themselves, without needing to depend on “the web guy?” Shouldn’t building a website be as easy as setting up a Facebook page?
Platform companies are product organizations that think in terms of roadmaps and features and sprints.
While some websites are simple and any luddite can quickly build them with existing DIY tools, many business websites are extremely complex and are custom built by internal teams and / or digital agencies for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Or millions. And, many small businesses just don’t want to learn how to use DIY tools, or don’t care to, or have time to. They’d rather focus on their day to day business. Digital marketing is not their forte or interest. (Source: medium.com)
