Why MyDND is different to other online webpage builders

October 2, 2009 on 3:47 pm | In Uncategorized | 2 Comments

I’ve been asked a lot recently why we think MyDND is better than the many other pagebuilder products available online. I’m not keen to say we’re better as I have respect for companies like Moonfruit (who’ve been around longer than 10 years and host more than 2 million websites), or the more recent services like Webnode and Weebly. But I would like to say we’re different and here’s why.

My vision was to create an online version of MS Publisher or Open Office Draw. This vision was born out of the frustration I encountered four years ago when attempting to publish a template-based website. Although templates are fantastic for non-creative people, if you want to do something like move a menu from the left to the top, or move the header image down and across you can’t. To make grid-like changes you need to change the whole template.

Another issue I had was that if I wanted 3 or 4 pages to look the same (as the template) that’s fine, but if I wanted some other pages to look completely different for other reasons, I wasn’t able to achieve this.

So I thought wouldn’t it be great to start with a blank page and simply create the look’n'feel using drag’n'drop, just like a desktop publishing tool? Secondly, to make this all online so I could edit it from anywhere without having to download software, and not have to learn about ftp and servers.

That’s how MyDND was born.

Virtually every single pagebuilder online today uses templates, and while we all achieve similar feature sets in terms of image uploads, online editing, multimedia embedding, sharing via twitter and facebook etc., MyDND allows creative people to get creative. For instance, if you opened a new Word or Publisher document, you wouldn’t expect to immediately be locked into a template – and the freedom from that is what we have achieved with MyDND.

Now I admit not everyone has design skills and may be daunted by starting with a blank page, and that’s why we have an economic design service for small business owners whereby they complete a simple brief and we create their look’n'feel which they can then edit later simply by logging in. This service is based in Java, Central Indonesia so we can pay well in local economic terms, but pass on low cost unqiue design services to more affluent countries.

We are also designing theme pages (like templates) as part of the v2.4 release on Oct 23, but the difference between these and what our competitors offer is that every object within a page can be moved and edited, and the themes do not apply to every page across an end-users account. Pages can be ’saved-as’ to continue the theme in other pages, or new pages can be created from blank.

Now that’s the basis of the product differences but we also have some business model differences which we believe set us apart.

For one we are totally community-centric. For instance, two of the key features released in v2.3 originated from early adopter feedback. Also, given we have a crowdfunding program, our users can invest small sums of money into MyDND and really feel part of the company.

Thirdlly, in v2.4 we are releasing an AppStore which is a similar concept to what Apple runs for the iPhone. When we switch ‘trusted scripts’ on in v2.4, users will be able to embed code developed by third parties (that we’ve tested to be safe of course) and then drag those mini-applications anywhere within a webpage. Some examples are:

• website chat window supplied by Olark so so two-way real-time communications with site visitors is achieved
• simple appointment manager that site visitors can interact with supplied by Setster
• advanced booking management system supplied by BookingBug

We are now inviting developers from anywhere to submit tools for testing that they feel would be useful for the MyDND community, and they can be offered free or at a cost (of which we will only take a small commission).

And finally, we will partner with any good people who share a similar vision. For instance, we are blending our publishing tools with the fantastic CRM package produced by California-based Ofuz, so that both products can share one back office. This will provide brilliant tools and value for small business owners.

We have also partnered with Texas-based Josh Stevens who is part of the Wizard Of Ads network. This network specializes in helping small business owners with their ad content, so morphing this into small business websites seems like a hand-in-glove fit.

So in effect, MyDND is naturally evolving from a free form publishing tool into a web platform for community generated applications.