Morphic was founded on the desire to democratize high-quality design, making it accessible and affordable for businesses of all sizes.
In an insightful interview with
Website Planet, Weston Baker, the visionary behind Morphic, shared how he recognized the challenges small businesses face in obtaining professional websites without incurring significant costs or enduring lengthy design processes. By productizing the creative agency model, Morphic offers a streamlined approach that combines agency-level design expertise with the efficiency of automated software.
With a mission to provide top-tier design and development solutions, Morphic ensures that even the smallest of businesses can present themselves with a polished, professional online presence.
What inspired the founding of Morphic and what is its core mission?
Morphic started from a simple idea: how can we create professionally designed materials and websites in a way that isn’t expensive or time-consuming? After working at top creative agencies, I noticed that many small businesses struggled to get a website that truly represented them without overspending and spending too much time navigating a complex design process. It often felt like they were reinventing the wheel of web design when they just needed something professional that truly reflected their company.
Morphic came about because we realized we could productize the creative agency design process—from customer information to a highly recommended final design output. We were able to create software that essentially thinks like an agency, creates final designs like an agency, and builds them for customers.
Our main mission is to give every business, no matter the size—even if it’s just a solopreneur—access to top agency-quality website design and development, along with tailored solutions that help them stand out.
How does Morphic help businesses enhance their product design and development processes?
Morphic essentially takes the design burden off small businesses, so they don’t need to be design experts. All they have to do is provide their information to the platform, and Morphic will strategically craft designs tailored to their specific needs.
Morphic automates the design process by leveraging techniques that top agencies use, which would typically be expensive and time-consuming for small businesses. Instead of relying on generic templates, Morphic creates custom designs based on the actual information provided by the user, delivering results in seconds rather than weeks or months.
The platform includes features that guide users through the process, providing solutions based on industry best practices. It removes the decision-making stress that can often lead to low-quality designs or a website that doesn’t represent the company well. For example, Morphic automatically generates custom site maps, and optimized layouts, and writes copy in the brand’s tone of voice, all while applying the company’s brand styles to the page designs.
One of the key benefits of Morphic is its ability to explain the design decisions back to the customer, helping them understand how their information was interpreted and why certain design choices were made. This empowers customers, even those without any design experience, to feel confident in the final product and provides them with the ability to give valuable feedback.
Many businesses struggle with template-based builders that look good initially but fall apart when trying to customize them. Morphic bridges the gap between looking good and being the right fit for the business, ensuring that the final design is not only visually appealing but also truly represents the company.
By taking the designer out of the equation, Morphic often results in a much higher quality final design, allowing businesses to confidently present their products to the world without hesitation. It helps businesses achieve results that they’re excited to share, rather than something they’re embarrassed to show because it doesn’t look as good as the original template.
What unique features set Morphic apart from other design and development platforms?
The biggest difference with Morphic is that it essentially has a built-in designer with intelligence. When a user or company onboards, they provide a lot of information to the platform, and Morphic uses that to build a brand profile. This profile is referenced whenever Morphic creates designs, making it act like a team of creative, design, website, and brand experts working for the end customer.
Most other website builders are built to be “no-code,” which was revolutionary about 15 years ago. However, they don’t provide guidance or actually understand the companies and customers using them. These tools are primarily design tools that allow users to change layouts, replace images, and launch a site, but that doesn’t work for everyone. Our customers want guidance and assurance that they’re getting the best possible design for their business. That’s where Morphic’s built-in designer, or “smart profile,” comes into play.
The smart profile contains all the company’s core information—like industry, audience, value proposition, specialization, differentiation, goals, brand personality, colors, fonts, and more. Morphic references this information to create custom designs and build specific strategies for how to represent ideas on the website and write copy.
As a company grows or changes over time, it can update its smart profile, and Morphic will instantly adjust its design and copywriting to reflect those changes. This makes Morphic a living, breathing design tool that acts like an agency in touch with the customer, aware of everything happening within the company, and able to design according to those changes.
Another significant advantage of Morphic is its ability to keep websites up-to-date with industry changes. Websites are often built at a specific point in time, but the industry evolves rapidly with new devices, browsers, ADA compliance standards, SEO guidelines, and more. If your website doesn’t adjust to these changes, it can quickly become outdated. To combat this, we’ve built a system that allows us to push upgrades to the core platform. Any website built on Morphic will inherit these upgrades the next time the user saves their site.
For example, if a new browser or device comes out, and you click save, Morphic will automatically adjust the code of your site to address those differences. This essentially eliminates the need to rebuild your site every few years, as is often the case with traditional websites. With the smart profile and all the tools in the platform, if you change your brand, do a rebrand, or refresh your brand, Morphic can automatically redesign the website and marketing materials based on those changes. There’s no longer a need to worry about outdated designs or external factors like mobile responsiveness because Morphic keeps everything current.
Can you share a success story where Morphic significantly improved a client’s product innovation?
One notable success story involves a new growth equity firm called Mamba Growth. They were introduced to us by an existing Morphic customer. Mamba Growth was struggling with the decision of whether to invest in a new website. Initially, they tried using a popular website builder to create a landing page, but they found it inadequate for announcing their firm.
As a bootstrapped company without funding, they were hesitant to invest in a full-scale website project. However, when they discovered Morphic, they were impressed by the possibility of creating an industry-leading online presence affordably and quickly, without having to spend much of their own time on it.
Mamba Growth provided Morphic with detailed information about their company, including their goals and unique characteristics. Using this information, Morphic crafted a unique brand identity concept for them. Although Mamba Growth only had a logo and an initial splash page, Morphic’s AI systems developed a brand identity that captured its essence. The concept, inspired by the “tech urban jungle,” resonated with the entrepreneurial journey that the firm represents. This concept was further enhanced by incorporating Mamba’s association with the “Mamba mentality” of Kobe Bryant, symbolized by the snake.
Morphic quickly developed a color palette featuring a Laker Gold-inspired yellow and a deep jungle green and provided strategic color distribution for the website. It also created images depicting an urban jungle setting, which gave the brand a distinctive and differentiated visual identity in a market with many similar-looking companies.
We were able to design, build, and launch Mamba Growth’s website in under three days—a process that typically would have taken months with a traditional creative agency. Now, even as a solo founder, he has the capability to make updates, add team members, and use Morphic’s features to evolve the site. For instance, he can easily create new pages and style them according to the existing strategies.
The website not only looked impressive but also aligned with his vision for the company. Within a week of launching, he announced the firm on LinkedIn and used the website as the main introduction to his audience. This case highlights how Morphic can help entrepreneurs who often feel that their websites do not reflect the quality they envision for their business, providing them with a professional, high-quality online presence that they are proud to share.
How does Morphic ensure the quality and effectiveness of its design solutions?
Ensuring quality is a major focus for Morphic. Coming from a background in creative agencies, we understand that customers seek the highest quality design work, often choosing top agencies for this reason. Our goal with Morphic was to provide the same level of design excellence, but in a way that is both time-efficient and cost-effective.
To achieve this, we’ve mapped out the problem-solving techniques and best practices used by creative agencies. We incorporated these proven strategies into Morphic to ensure that our design solutions are of the highest quality. While creating high-quality templates is relatively straightforward, crafting a custom-designed website or brand material that reflects a client’s unique information and services is more challenging. Morphic excels in delivering high-quality, customized designs tailored specifically to each client’s needs.
Here’s how it works: After a user provides their information during onboarding, Morphic can design and build their site in just seconds. The result is a site that feels personalized and bespoke, not like a generic template. Clients will see their own logo, custom copywriting, and brand colors. The images and design elements are chosen to reflect the core concepts and industry of their business.
When clients first view their Morphic-designed site, it should feel as though they are seeing a custom design from an agency, rather than a template pulled from a website builder. This approach ensures that the design is not only high quality but also specifically tailored to the client’s brand, delivering a professional and effective solution that is both faster and more affordable than traditional methods.
What new features or innovations is Morphic planning to introduce?
Morphic has a grand vision that extends beyond being just a high-quality website builder. Our mission is to become an accessible design expert, essentially functioning as an automated creative agency. We aim to be deeply connected to each client’s company, understanding everything about their brand, products, services, and team. This way, when a client needs something new, Morphic can deliver it swiftly and with high quality, while also being easy to update.
Currently, we are working on several exciting innovations involving AI and system enhancements. We are streamlining the user experience by simplifying how information is provided to Morphic. Soon, users will be able to upload a presentation deck, paste a website URL, or type a description, and Morphic will automatically build their smart profile and use it to design and develop a custom site. This will make onboarding significantly faster.
Additionally, we are improving our design output by integrating more case studies, best practices, design solutions, and creative concepts into the platform. This will help Morphic continue to produce increasingly refined custom designs.
Our approach is inspired by the automotive industry’s shift from mass production to more personalized manufacturing. Just as cars can be customized to fit specific needs and preferences, we want Morphic to offer highly tailored website solutions. Unlike template-based designs that are created for the average user, Morphic’s goal is to provide a bespoke design experience that reflects the unique aspects of each business.
We are also focusing on the importance of high-quality branding, particularly in the B2B sector. A strong online presence and consistent branding are crucial for building trust with potential customers and partners. Research shows that 94% of first impressions are based on visual elements, which can significantly impact how businesses are perceived.
In summary, our roadmap is packed with innovations aimed at enhancing design quality, user experience, and brand impact. We are committed to optimizing our platform to deliver the highest level of custom design solutions efficiently and affordably.
Find out more at:
www.getmorphic.com
