“Through the Internet, Israel can deliver the infrastructure and know-how to any designer in the world."
By PATRICIA CARMEL(From left to right) Tzvika Steinmetz, CRO; Yam Regev, CMO; Shmulik Grizim, CEO.(photo credit: PATRICIA CARMEL)
During the decades-long era of Internet dominance, most websites were typically produced by the Web designer, who created the layout and navigation, and the Web developer, who wrote the code that brought the Web designer’s vision to your desktops, tablets and mobiles.Launched in May 2013, a website creation platform called Webydo aims to put the designer in the driver’s seat by taking the Web developer out of the equation. Webydo CEO Shmulik Grizim and co-founder CRO (chief revenues officer) Zvika Steinmetz are targeting professional Web designers who provide Web services to businesses, both in-house and freelance.Says Grizim, “For any business, your website is your real office – it’s where your customers and potential customers hang out. Your online office is your real face to the world.”Webydo’s core technology enables Web designers to let their imaginations run free without the need for even a single line of code. Explains Grizim, “You just take your images and videos and drop them wherever you want on the page. Webydo supports all types of media, including video, animations, widgets. Once your design is on the canvas, you just click a button and Webydo does the rest.”It is then that Webydo’s sophisticated code generator comes to life. It generates the code behind the scenes, creates the website and hosts it in a secure Google Cloud environment.For Grizim and Steinmetz, Webydo is their third joint venture. After over 10 years in the Web industry, including running Web design and Web marketing agencies, they recognized the need for a product that is not contingent on a process that depends to such an extent on the developers.According to Grizim, “Over the last 20 years, Web developers have dominated the market. Seventy percent of the Web-building budget went to them. They did a great job and they earned a lot of money. But there are some 39.2 million Web designers around the world. We wanted to create a platform that allows them to deliver beautiful websites without having to depend on code. Today, everyone understands that to communicate your message, you need a great design, and we believe that in the next 20 years it’s the designers who will dominate the website creation market.”Since the time Internet design was in its infancy, website design has evolved from linked, single-column, text-based pages to a virtual cornucopia of dynamic, interactive content that tended to obscure rather than enhance the site’s message.According to Grizim, a good Web design does not bombard the viewer with data. Designers who take content seriously understand that most people skim over a webpage, looking for the most important content.“There needs to be a clear hierarchy of information,” he says. “A professional website should have a clean look and feel.”
Webydo also supports new trends in website design, such as offering a powerful parallax animator editor. Parallax scrolling is a special effect that activates background screen elements at a slower speed than foreground elements, creating an illusion of depth.Asserts Grizim, “Webydo is a community-led endeavor that supports newbie designers who can learn from seasoned professionals how to create a quality website. It’s not difficult to design a website. But if you want to be really professional, you need to take it seriously. Our team is there to offer feedback and support.”Webydo currently has some 163,000 users in 95 countries. As to be expected, the highest percentage of users are in the USA, accounting for 40% of the overall market. Twenty percent of users are in the UK, and more than 5% in Middle Eastern countries.Grizim opines that over 50% of Webydo users come from word of mouth. Website infrastructure is currently translated into Spanish, Russian and Chinese, with plans to support more languages in the future.“Through the Internet, Israel can deliver the infrastructure and know-how to any designer in the world,” he says. “And with Webydo, designers can express themselves and create beautiful websites. They are limited only by their imagination.”