Kanyweb; A professional website development platform

Advanced site builders , they provide the possibility of creating sites that look very similar to sites that have been programmed from the ground up. Website builders work with the “software as a service” model and offer their service, which is to create a website, at a much lower cost than programming it from the ground up. In Iran, various groups were looking for the development of site builders, and many of them failed due to the complexities of developing this product. In the meantime, some groups have been able to provide acceptable services Kanyweb is one of them. Amir Mirmoini, The founder of KaniWeb is a professional programmer who has worked in the field of website builder for many years. To get to know him and his business, with an interview Ecomotive Be with him:

Tell us about Amir Mirmoini and his experiences.

I am Amir Mirmoini, a programmer and product architect. I started programming in elementary school and web design in middle school. At the time, I was mostly building personal websites that didn’t serve a particular purpose, using free hosting services and simple software. Some time later, during high school, I started a blogging service called “Parsi Cute” on the same current domain of Kanyeweb.

At that time, the fever of blogging services was high and the Parsi Kyot service grew rapidly; To the extent that it reached the rank below 50 among the most visited Iranian sites. Later we started to earn money from that service as “Site Builder”. A minimum income was obtained; But finally, due to many technical problems and inexperience, the service was abandoned for almost two years and practically failed. This event coincided with the end of my university and as soon as the old blogging system was abandoned, the construction and development of Kanyweb began.

How did you get from a blogging service to a website builder?

The initial idea of ​​Kanyweb’s “site builder” was imperfectly formed on the same blogging system. At that time, building a blog – unlike building a website – was not so complicated. My personal interest in having a site, as well as difficult and complicated experiences in this matter, made me think of building a site builder; That is, a method that can be used to design a website very simply and without getting involved in technical details. Blogfa, Persian blog And… at that time they offered blogging services; But one of the sites from which the idea was strongly taken was a service called “Parsi Box”, which had very modern facilities and appearance in its time; Of course, it ended in failure.

The first system that was designed, despite the experience of building the site by more than 300 thousand users, was not capable enough. As a result, after we were sure of its failure, except for a special user group, we archived all several hundreds of thousands of sites and again implemented the current version from scratch, which is naturally from modern content management systems. Ideas has taken many But now, our main value is the emphasis on the quality of the output site and more importantly, the user experience of building the site. It is very important for us that the sites look as professional as possible, and on the other hand, working with the administration department and the process of building the site is as simple as possible. Similar services with the aim of designing a simple website were added one by one after the start of the new Kaniweb, and now their number has increased.

How long did it take to get to the initial version of the product??

Our product had more technical dimensions and construction MVP It was very time consuming. It took about 2 years to reach the initial release version; The problem is that in order to compete with similar examples, a group of minimum features must be achieved without which one cannot start the work, and these minimums, compared to Startup Non-technical ones are much more and more complicated. Naturally, it takes a lot of time; Because site builders are massive and complex projects.

What is the level of expertise required to develop a site builder??

Due to the fact that the site builder is a highly technical and specialized idea and that Kanyweb is a startup. SaaS is considered, the technology aspect is very important in our work. So, naturally, most of our team are programmers; But not ordinary programmers, professional people with the ability to code in the most modern standards of the day. Programming skill according to global standards has been the most important factor. Now, about 8 people are directly and indirectly involved in this project, including one Front-end designer and programmer, four Full Stack programmers, two sales, support and content specialists, and one consultant and analyst. Marketing be. Other people as well mentor They cooperate with us.

After the long product development period, what strategy did you have to enter the market?

We kept the market entry process slow for a long time; Because our product had many minor flaws and if the user encountered a problem, the probability of buying from us would naturally be very low. In fact, we settled on a very small amount of users who entered through channels such as the search engine in order to test the system. Right now our program – using all available channels – use both methods Inbound marketing And Outbound marketing It is combined.

How did you collect and analyze feedback to fix site issues?

We used the most common method, which is communication and telephone interview and chat with customers, and we got as much information as possible from the customers themselves. Another move was the “dedicated system” that we designed ourselves to report errors in real time so that we can quickly solve the problems that occur in the system remotely. Many feedbacks were also taken in person from different people to determine the problems of the user experience of the system.

Do you have any plans for the development of Kaniweb services?

Yes; The set of services that we have predicted are many. In the future, specialized facilities based on each site-based business will be provided in Kanyweb.

Did you receive support from organizations and institutions?

Our collection in the park Science and Technology has been accepted and we received help in the form of facilities; But there has been no direct facilitation.

What a challengeTheyou hadd And how about itTheYou have overcome?

Our biggest challenge was the technical issue. Building a site with a site builder requires a very complex programming infrastructure. Naturally, this complexity multiplies when a system is supposed to give this possibility to hundreds of thousands of people at the same time. This challenge is still there; But much less. The only solution was more effort. In the field of marketing, we also have challenges such as introducing the product to potential customers. We tried to solve this challenge using creative and low-cost methods.

Are there other problems that have not been solved?

One of the problems we are dealing with right now is getting proper media coverage. The bad thing that happened in the Iranian technology media is a concept called Advertisement report This has caused Iranian technology news sites to not attach importance to Iranian products, innovation or technology and never provide news coverage to startups without charging a fee, except for the group news of a large company like Digikala. This issue can cause a service that offers a much lower quality than ours, by spending money and without careful quality control, to artificially rise in the eyes of Google; While this work is not real and only done by paying money. I think we need to break the monopoly of people who look at tech news coverage as a revenue tool and people who really care should promote independent sites.

Download PDF of the interview