How to build a minimal product using no-code

What is it:

Helping causes impacting peoples' lives. Rocket Currently, distributing masks in 15+ cities in India & US + supporting workers who were laid off due to COVID-19.

Maker Insight:

To be a faster maker.

What did I learn:

1. Less is More - Build Minimally with no-code to iterate faster - we do not need fancy feature bloat websites to accomplish our goals. Many times we must fight that urge especially when you're building a project that you're proud of you want others to see your craftsmanship.

However, you miss a valuable opportunity to take the pressure off of yourself and others who view your project.

I need to do a better job in my projects implementing like Sanketh did. In my experience it is hard and requires product discipline to distill your product down to its core and leaving it there. We always want to add more, and often less is more.

A famous blog post by Paul Buckheit is here: http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2010/02/if-your-product-is-great-it-doesnt-need.html

It is about this very topic. The title of blog says it all. If you're product is great it doesn't need to be good. And at its core, no more than 3 things is all it needs to do. The principle is focusing on the essence of what you're trying to do. And anything more than 3 features, will take away from the other features. Thus giving you diminishing returns and reducing the likelihood of your user being successful with your product.

2. Form to request information - Google Forms - starting here is a no-brainer. Google forms does not get enough love but it should. It's free, insanely easy to use, very basic, but gets the job done. Sure it's not pretty, but those $29 per month Typeform monthly charges will eat you up quickly. In an MVP stage its a no brainer. Even past that, just use the simple, free tools. Andrey Azimov who created Sheet2site.com used Google forms for his product even after he shipped it. Forms are best to just get the job done. They don't have to be pretty.

Another popular form that I would suggest is Airtable. Airtable forms are free, and I like the way Airtable works because you have a lot of flexibility when creating different types of category listings and the Airtable database is powerful to set up logic and conditional rules based on the entries from a form. Something worth checking out if you are looking for a free form.

3. Information hierarchy - What is the core activity that you want the user to accomplish? Everything on the page must be set up to accomplish this.

I would make one recommendation for the landing page. As a user on the page I felt that the top nav bar was overwhelming the Hero and subtitle. For me this gave me confusion when I first landed on the page. One thing that I struggle with and we all do as Makers is viewing your project through the lens of someone who lands on the page for the first time.

Our eyes cannot always be trusted. Because we are so intimate with our project, often times our brain does not pick up the fact that the information hierarchy might not be in order. We know our project so intimately we can't see it for the first time anymore. So that means its easy to miss obvious things.

This happens to every single one of us.

This happens to me every-time I make and launch a project. That is why asking folks to check out your work for sanity checks is so helpful. Because they are not as emersed as you in the project and can pick out things like the general UX flow or the way the copy reads.

As an example, in this project the information hierarchy on the landing page could be different. There are three "bits" of information.
1. Nav bar mixed with how to get more information about the project as well as CTA's to do the core activation of the app
2. HERO "masks for everyone"
3. Subtitle " #Wishboard is a project to help causes which impact people's lives through one initiative at a time"

On this page it is okay to have a nav bar, but with it positioned so close to the HERO and subtitle it all blurs together. So as a user I read the nav bar first which is confusing because I don't know what to do and I don't instantly know what this page is about.

This cognitive friction is an extra step put in the user's path between them and doing the thing you want them to do, which is donate or request for masks.

The way I would recommend structuring this page is put the nav bar much further up on top of the page with just the buttons for more information like "home", "About" "Press" "Contact"

Then I would take two of those buttons in teh original nav bar and slide them below the subtitle and color those buttons differently so the user immediately knows what to do.

This type of landing page change is something that I find myself doing as well as what I see in other Makers projects as well. It is HARD thing to do to be a Maker. Bravo to those brave enough to ship. You have my respect!