Can you give us a brief overview of WebSumo as a company and its backstory?
With a background in Interfaces (EDI), the idea to create a website builder was born at a lunch table in 2007. How great would it be if you could visit a customer and create a website on the spot that the customer could then manage themselves? Dreamweaver was an inspiration at the time, but because not all the knowledge was available, it resulted in a toolbox The approach was already: Do more in less time! In the years that followed, each rebuild of the idea grew into a larger system. The heart of this concept has now become layered and much more flexible, with possibilities for customization at different levels. Each of the layers has a responsibility, which means that it is not necessary to make SEO adjustments, for example. Version 4 provided media agencies with CMS systems and turned their designs into very dynamic websites, which resulted in too much “demand”. Because there are only 24 hours in a day, customers also had to be able to build themselves. With this in mind, version 5 was started in 2017 and I had a working Proof of Concept in a few months. From that point on, the platform is an example of CI/CD and we renamed the system to www.websumo.com. Everything I have encountered in my professional career is in this system. Now almost everything is tested automatically so that we are well informed about errors in the system. However, if an error does creep in, we can switch quickly, because the lines are very short. For SEO validation we use professional tools. What is not visible at first glance is that there is much more potential under the hood than just a dynamic website builder. The roadmap includes points such as:- More content/building blocks;
- AI configuration/customization;
- Blockchain;
- IoT integration.
What is the “basic” process of creating a website through WebSumo?
The basic process is to go to www.websumo.com and click “Start Now”. On the login screen use a social account or create an account through email (validation steps necessary). Once logged in click “New Website” or “New Solution”. – New Website: is based on a template or if you prefer to start blank you can select and combine building blocks. – New Solution: ready-to-use solution, currently only a basic webshop. We can ignore the system suggestion if you want to head to the builder. On top select “Publish” followed by selecting your website. Follow 3 steps to release your new website as a subdomain like <yournewwebsite>.websumo.com totally free of charge. Done! At this point we have subdomains and BYOD – Bring Your Own Domain. In Q1 we will release full domain registration for 29 USD saving you any DNS hassle. Adding e-mail with the full domain will become available later this year.What specific or additional features do you offer?
We offer a build service if you don’t want to spend time building a website. Furthermore, we also offer customisations for just about anything within www.websumo.com. Due to the layered concept, we have options for customisation on different levels, and, most importantly, all customer-specific settings, data, and customisations are physically separated. All customisations are at request!How do you help your clients build up SEO for their websites?
One of the layers in the system takes care of the technical SEO in the website, which makes it possible to just fill in the seo tab in the builder and sit back. Based on the pages you have the sitemap is generated at request by adding /sitemap.xml behind your domain URL. I just now became aware we don’t have any documents for people to follow in case this is their first website experience. We will be creating these asap! In the dashboard, you can set your analytics code in website properties just by pasting and saving. The rest of the details will be activated automatically. For link-building, we don’t have any service yet, as we are still investigating if this is something we should offer.What sets WebSumo apart from other website builders?
First of all, I would say at this moment the main difference is the price. Let me explain why the prices can be so low. When I started working I became a system administrator, which gave me a lot of knowledge about systems. After that, I started programming and ended up in the (EDI) interface corner, which created even more knowledge in the chain. In my first years as an entrepreneur, we built a hosting system and automated almost everything, which ultimately resulted in servers that controlled themselves, doing more in less time. With all that knowledge and intelligent software, it is now possible to do almost everything on managed hardware (in the cloud) and keep the costs low. We don’t have a trillion templates (yet), but we do offer a solid service for a good honest price. It’s a bit like Apple in the very early days… there are only 3 buttons, but they work! The second difference is my favorite: Solutions Everyone is crazy about AI at the moment, but what is not built in a jiffy even for an AI is a complete solution. Because, for example, a shop works in a similar way for a large part of the world we have come up with “solutions” and the first is a webshop. Instead of “New Website” you click on “New Solution” and publish your webshop with the same speed and completely free. These solutions have their own “setup” screen and instruction videos about the controls. As we say at WebSumo: Happy Creating!To learn more about WebSumo, you can visit websumo.com
