When I wrote the first line of code for Weebly in my Penn State dorm room in 2007, I never imagined we’d be powering a global community of 40 million entrepreneurs, helping them effortlessly sell online and make money doing what they love. All this made possible with a growing team of more than 300 employees, who are just as dedicated to making Weebly the best web platform as myself and my co-founders.
Over the last 9 years our goal has always been to help the world's entrepreneurs succeed. We've finally realized that goal with the most impactful release Weebly has ever created as a company. Weebly 4 is a major stepping stone for the next wave of micro entrepreneurs, makers, and small business owners to jump into the digital frontier of DIY ecommerce. Now anyone can grow a global business from their phone or laptop and be able to do what they love, without getting hung up on how to master the ever-changing tech.
But, before we get into what we’re releasing. Let’s talk about why we’re releasing it:
The business of building a business is broken. It’s fragmented. It’s confusing. And it’s overwhelming for bootstrapping entrepreneurs trying to launch their idea online.
We realized that third party apps are a perk, but not enough, disconnected email marketing is not a time friendly solution, templated storefronts won’t cut it and embedding code can be complicated and time consuming. We did research that shows that 45% of people who started an online business in the US last year (across all platforms) don’t even know what SEO stands for. But 89% knew that getting found on Google was critical to their business. We realized a few SEO help articles or webinars were not enough. We realized that basically, people are lost on what to do after they publish their site.
Our research shows that online entrepreneurs have to log into four different platforms everyday to run their online business. FOUR different platforms! To us, that’s crazy. We realized there was an opportunity to do what we do best; take complicated technology, make it design friendly, simple and accessible to anyone.
We realized we could create a place where we not only get people started online, but we help them grow and commit to be a partner in their success. Weebly 4 is our commitment to ride shotgun with your site and store and help you every step of the way.
Our new platform is a place where websites, eCommerce and marketing effortlessly work together. We redesigned our website builder with custom, full width sections, video backgrounds, parallax scrolling, and a the ability to drag and drop products and categories anywhere on your site.
That is paired with our rebuilt our eCommerce engine that is ready to take you from the first sale to several million. We packed it full of features that will help an entrepreneur in their home studio compete with major retailers. Things like abandoned cart emails, gift cards, real time shipping rates, simplified taxes and the easiest storefront creation on the market. All in an easy to use interface.
Then there’s the deeply integrated marketing that helps you grow and get found online. We built an in-house email marketing solution, Promote, that is so tightly tied to your store and site, you’ll never have to re-upload a product, price or blog post into your email template. We’ll suggest the emails you should send to get more customers, create emails for you based off of actions in your store, like adding a coupon or a new product. We even collect all your contacts and group them by customer behavior to help you run high impact campaigns like a pro. This is matched with our new embedded SEO real time scorecard, daily tips and the most comprehensive guide to SEO that gives you step by step assistance to boosting your search ranking and demystifying this hurdle that so many people face.
We built this to help people save time, get a head start in their business and most importantly to allow them to focus on doing what they love, while we focus on powering you with the best technology.
It’s the first step in our new mission to fix the business of building a business. But, another chapter in our 9 year story of helping the world’s entrepreneurs succeed.
We sincerely hope this helps everyday entrepreneurs of all ages, backgrounds, income levels and tech savviness- or lack thereof- take the leap to do what they love. Rest assured, we’re doing what we love here at Weebly.
But, before we get into what we’re releasing. Let’s talk about why we’re releasing it:
The business of building a business is broken. It’s fragmented. It’s confusing. And it’s overwhelming for bootstrapping entrepreneurs trying to launch their idea online.
We realized that third party apps are a perk, but not enough, disconnected email marketing is not a time friendly solution, templated storefronts won’t cut it and embedding code can be complicated and time consuming. We did research that shows that 45% of people who started an online business in the US last year (across all platforms) don’t even know what SEO stands for. But 89% knew that getting found on Google was critical to their business. We realized a few SEO help articles or webinars were not enough. We realized that basically, people are lost on what to do after they publish their site.
Our research shows that online entrepreneurs have to log into four different platforms everyday to run their online business. FOUR different platforms! To us, that’s crazy. We realized there was an opportunity to do what we do best; take complicated technology, make it design friendly, simple and accessible to anyone.
We realized we could create a place where we not only get people started online, but we help them grow and commit to be a partner in their success. Weebly 4 is our commitment to ride shotgun with your site and store and help you every step of the way.
Our new platform is a place where websites, eCommerce and marketing effortlessly work together. We redesigned our website builder with custom, full width sections, video backgrounds, parallax scrolling, and a the ability to drag and drop products and categories anywhere on your site.
That is paired with our rebuilt our eCommerce engine that is ready to take you from the first sale to several million. We packed it full of features that will help an entrepreneur in their home studio compete with major retailers. Things like abandoned cart emails, gift cards, real time shipping rates, simplified taxes and the easiest storefront creation on the market. All in an easy to use interface.
Then there’s the deeply integrated marketing that helps you grow and get found online. We built an in-house email marketing solution, Promote, that is so tightly tied to your store and site, you’ll never have to re-upload a product, price or blog post into your email template. We’ll suggest the emails you should send to get more customers, create emails for you based off of actions in your store, like adding a coupon or a new product. We even collect all your contacts and group them by customer behavior to help you run high impact campaigns like a pro. This is matched with our new embedded SEO real time scorecard, daily tips and the most comprehensive guide to SEO that gives you step by step assistance to boosting your search ranking and demystifying this hurdle that so many people face.
We built this to help people save time, get a head start in their business and most importantly to allow them to focus on doing what they love, while we focus on powering you with the best technology.
It’s the first step in our new mission to fix the business of building a business. But, another chapter in our 9 year story of helping the world’s entrepreneurs succeed.
We sincerely hope this helps everyday entrepreneurs of all ages, backgrounds, income levels and tech savviness- or lack thereof- take the leap to do what they love. Rest assured, we’re doing what we love here at Weebly.
David Rusenko David is the Co-Founder and CEO of Weebly.