Interview with Shmulik Grizim, Webydo CEO and Co-founder
Webydo is a powerful website builder that's recently begun to really gain traction for themselves in the industry. Today, we bring you our interview with Webydo CEO and co-founder Shmulik Grizim. Read on to find out more about this unique and interesting website builder.
Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your background?
Before working on Webydo, with my partner Tzvika Steinmetz, we founded and headed two leading web agencies that are still very successful.
Webydo is a collision of two personal passions of mine – the web and good design. Good design puts creativity at the center, enriching the human experience. My other great passion is the web. The web has introduced a new era of collaborative efforts. An innovative community brings to life radical transformations. I believe that Webydo's designers’ community is building up this transformative power that will change the structure of the web itself.
How did Webydo come about?
We were leading a big web agency and felt frustrated by the fact that 70% of website creation budget is going towards the repetitive development of handwritten code. This old professional process for creating a website was slow and expensive and we felt that the hands of our creative designers were tied. Designers are marginalized in this process; they cannot experience their designs in real time and lack direct communication with their clients. We believe there's a need for a pro-designers movement, a community lead platform that will enable designers to control the entire website creation process on their own.
We've asked the best mathematicians and engineers to develop a code generator that will automatically convert graphic design into code. With Webydo designers can finally create advanced websites for their clients in a process that is ten times faster and cheaper, without hiring a developer or writing even one line of code. That's a real revolution.
We hope more talented designers will join Webydo’s community and help us create the best work environment for creative designers.
Where to you think the market is headed for website builders?
The web design market has seen a rise of low-cost, Do-It-Yourself solutions for amateurs like Wix, Squarespace and Weebly. These simple tools offer limited selection of pre-designed templates and are designed to provide a “fast, fun and easy” process for unprofessional users. However, less than 3% of websites are created using do-it-yourself platforms. Amateurs find it hard to finish the process and only 2% of the registered users manage to publish a site on domain. We believe website creation is a serious task that needs to be done by professional designers.
And indeed, more than 70% of websites today are created in a professional process by developers and designers using pro-developers platforms such as WordPress, Joomla and Drupal. However, using these solutions designers still need to code or hire developers.
Yet, there is a global community of 38 million designers who wish to focus on the creative side and create multiple websites for their clients without writing code. Designers cannot use DIY website-builders, as these solutions are not suitable for professional use. Asking a designer to create a website using DIY website builders is like asking a designer to design for print using PowerPoint… Professional designers need professional solutions.
Now, there is finally a solution made by designers, for designers. Webydo’s free online software enables designers to create and manage multiple pixel-perfect websites for their clients, without writing code or hiring developers. With Webydo designers can build an independent web design business and conquer the market.
Where do you see Webydo in this market?
Webydo is the leader of the pro-designers movement. We’re providing the first full solution for website creation, designed specifically to fit the needs of creative designers.
We believe that designers should grab the driver’s seat of website creation. Designers are the innovative force behind the great achievements of this era. And, while developers have extremely powerful open-source communities such as WordPress, designers had no solutions tailored to fit their creative and professional needs. It is time for designers to unite in action and create a design-centered platform. We hope more talented designers will join Webydo designers’ community and together we will create a better web for us all.
What do you think makes Webydo unique? Why?
Webydo’s free cloud software is like an online Photoshop re-imagined for the web. Every feature in the system was made with designers needs in mind, providing designers with total creative freedom and independence. The challenge was to make Webydo's sophisticated system extremely user friendly and efficient. One element that saves a lot of headaches for designers is that with Webydo you are designing in browser. There is no need to install or patch any software and you can continue working on your clients’ sites from any computer. Webydo's system provides a full code-free cloud solution for designing, managing, and hosting your clients’ sites and even billing your clients.
Webydo enables designers to start designing from scratch, with a blank canvas, using a professional “what-you-see-is-what-you-get” design interface that allows designers to just drag and drop images, texts, videos, flash, galleries, menus, custom designed forms, widgets, or even their own HTML code. When the designer finishes designing and hits Publish, the website is immediately live online.
Moreover, designers need to have a clear and direct dialog with their clients, as websites today demand constant updating and managing. This is why Webydo offers designers two integrated work environments: the professional online software for creating and designing websites as well as a built-in CMS (Content Management System) for the ongoing content updates by the website owner. Designers can even lock parts of their design, preventing unwanted changes and preserving full artistic control. This integration of professional web design cloud software with a CMS that can be easily used by unprofessional users allows designers to provide their clients with exceptional web design service.
Lastly, the full Webydo solution is provided to designers for free. Designers can even host unlimited amount of websites on Webydo’s sub-domain all free of charge. When the designers’ clients are ready to publish their sites on domain, the client can purchase a premium plan for $9.99 a month. In this way Webydo is helping designers build a strong and independent web design business.
If you could change one thing about the industry, what would it be?
There used to be many technological barriers in the process of creating advanced websites, including the need to master HTML code, databases, Ajax, Java Script, .NET, handle server crashes, etc. Webydo’s mission is to eliminate all these technical barriers and help designers focus on what is most important – the creative side.
What do you consider your biggest accomplishment to date?
We’ve started with a small team and a tremendous mission to find a solution to a problem that big companies like Adobe have yet to solve. The strength of Webydo’s innovative platform is coming out of the fact that Webydo is lead by its users. Webydo’s devoted community of designers is setting up the roadmap for development of Webydo’s online software, suggesting features and voting which features should be developed first. We believe in radical democracy and we want designers to own the Webydo platform and shape our future.
Your biggest failure?
There are still many designers who have not yet joined Webydo…
Webydo has a strong community of more than 13,000 designers who’ve already created close to 90,000 websites and hundreds of designers are joining us every month. We see every designer who joins us as our partner and we hope this tremendous momentum will continue and the design community will unite in action and turn Webydo into the best work environment for website creation by designers.
Where do you see your product 5 years from now?
We want to empower & help designers lead the website creation market, turning the web into a richer human experience.
Thank you for your time Mr. Grizim.
—
Have you tried Webydo? If not, check them out and let us know what you think in the comments below: Try Webydo