Make your own website while heating up a pizza slice

Ucraft is an easy-to-use website builder that makes it possible for everyone to create a stunning site for their personal brands. Ucraft provides you with everything you need to build a top-notch website!

Kevin William David interviewed Gev Balyan, Founder of Ucraft to know more.

Can you tell us about what you are working on? What is Ucraft?

First of all, Ucraft is a drag and drop website builder, that provides tools to create fully functional websites, starting from creating your own logo to designing pages and optimizing them for search engines.

Tell me more about why you are building this?

The vision behind Ucraft has primarily been to enable customers to create professional-looking websites with no technical or design skills, be it a landing page, a full website or an online store.

We also tend to provide affordable pricing models to make the product a perfect fit for different individuals and businesses.

How is Ucraft different from what already exists in the market?

The first thing that comes to mind is the design, as whatever we do at Ucraft is with UX and design in mind. We put design and UI above all to guarantee a smooth and intuitive experience. Plus, Ucraft offers a 24/7 customer support so make the creative process even more effortless and engaging.

Who uses Ucraft? What types of roles do your customers have at their companies?

The ideal answer would be anyone who’s up to creating websites for their personal or company brands. In other words, all the small business owners, marketers, designers and freelancers out there. All the designer templates are categorized into various industries and themes, so anyone can find one to fit their vision perfectly.

How are your customers using Ucraft? Could you share a few different use cases?

Our clients’ wants and needs vary, so do the scenarios of using Ucraft. Let’s say you can generate more leads and drive traffic by building a free landing page, or represent your works by creating a beautiful personal portfolio website. Credible company websites and successful online stores are the next cases of building an efficient online presence with Ucraft.

Have there been unique use cases for Ucraft that you hadn’t thought of or expected?

There are tons of unique websites in our database built by super creative individuals, but the absolute shock goes to the weed delivery online shop website, for a business based in California. Guys have created a fantastic website with Ucraft which then turned into a template named El Chocho: https://demo-el-chocho.ucraft.me

Were there any early ‘growth hacks’ or tactics that have contributed to your current success?

The so-called tactic that our team swears by has been listening to customer feedback from the very beginning of launching the project. It has definitely helped us in building the platform what we call Ucraft now. An always developing and progressing platform with tons of powerful integrations, highly enthusiastic team and a dedicated client base.

What were some of the biggest challenges while building the product early on and how did you solve them?

It goes without saying that launching a startup is a rather challenging thing to do. At the very start, I had a small team of great developers and designers behind the project and a clear vision that had to be brought to reality: what the final platform would look like, what functionalities it should include, etc.

However, when I was presented with the demo of Ucraft after three months of sleepless nights, it turned out to be that everything was far from what I expected.

So, when the developers went home later that night, I literally erased 3000 hours of my colleagues’ work. And no, it was not a mistake :). That was risky and abrupt, I knew, but I was convinced there was nothing that could save the situation rather than starting everything from scratch.

I broke the news to the developers the next morning. Needless to say they were angry, but the experience did help them to become better at their jobs down the road. Moreover, it taught our whole crew to work in unison and turn into a real “team”.

What have been some of the most interesting integrations you’ve added? Are there any that have been particularly impactful for you?

Ucraft has made a big number of powerful friendships with the most influential platforms on the web. This took the builder to a new level marketing-wise. Now it’s not only about creating beautiful websites, but also marketing them in the best light possible. Google Analytics and HotJar Hotjar for their outstanding analytic features or Zendesk and Intercom for building a strong bond with customers, to name just a few.

Among the fun ones, can’t miss the integration with Unsplash free stock, which’s like having the world’s most generous community of photographers providing you with eye-catching visuals for your website.

Finally, What are the top products that you depend on to run the company & how do you use them?

As an SEO enthusiast, I should apparently mention Ahrefs.com as we strongly rely on the data provided by this platform for growing our organic search traffic and SEMrush for optimizing our builder for our clients’ SEO.

Then I’ll go with Intercom, as an all-in-one platform that helps us to keep in touch with our users, as well as educate them on every stage of their user experience.

Originally published at siftery.com.