Hi Hunters! I'm the marketing guy at Verst. We are all extremely pumped to get this baby out in the world and start hearing your feedback and ideas! Check out Reid Hoffman's site as an output example (www.reidhoffman.org)
Yes, we are another platform for building websites and blogs, but Verst is not another WordPress or Squarespace clone. We are aiming at a new market, the gap that exists between those beginner website tools and enterprise-grade business solutions like Optimizely and HubSpot. We call them "professional publishers," the types that create valuable content as a means to achieve tangible business results.
So, Verst is focused on integrating (*buzzword alert*) machine learning tech that allows publishers to run a data-driven content business. We are starting with built-in A/B testing, insights notifications that distill your data into actionable alerts, easy calls-to-action as a native feature, and turnkey subscriptions (coming soon). We've also built a modular design system so publishers won't have to shell out for custom templates & eventual redesigns. And lastly, we're truly mobile focused in that our Verst Mobile app matches our full desktop publishing experience (you can A/B test right from your phone), and all Verst designs are engineered to look great across all screen sizes.
We hope this platform takes much of the pain out of the current publishing experience, greatly reduces the volume & friction of tools & plug-ins required to succeed, and allows great creators to drive more signups, subscribers, purchases, etc. -- at a very "non-enterprise" price ($29).
While anyone can try Verst free for 30 days, we are happy to offer Product Hunters an exclusive discount of 20% off your entire first year, using the coupon code: hunt
Please AMA or reach out with any feedback or questions! garett@verst.com
@bentossell@garettpress Hi Ben,
Thank you so much for the feedback!
Re: your first bullet, category is meant as both an organizational filter (like a tag) and as a way to organize your menu (and does appear publicly). We are working right now on (a) allowing you to organize this in a more granular way (b) a way to allow sub menus (so multiple levels for the nav) and (c) add multiple tags / categories. (a) and (b) should be out in the next 1-2 weeks and (c) not to much further after that. That being said, I'll write up a modal to add there so it's clear what the intention is for now.
Re: your second bullet - we were affected by the AWS outage, unfortunately, so it appears the issue is due to that. Try reloading and clearing your cache and, in the meantime, I'll have my team investigate to make sure there's nothing strange on our end. If you have a minute / it happens again, if you could send us a screenshot of your console and a link your site to feedback@verst.com so we can see the specific error your getting, that would be super helpful.
@bentossell@garettpress perfect, thank you - i'll investigate today though i am fairly sure it's S3 since that's where we store images (and posts generally) :)
Lot of hate going on for these guys right now. They used a lifetime AppSumo offer to spike revenue and users, and then as soon as the refund period ended they sent out the notice about being acquired by DropBox and said they were shuttering the service in just a couple weeks. No refunds are being provided to the AppSumo buyers and all inquiries are being told to basically chase AppSumo for their dough. There is no way these guys didn't know they were shopping their company around and used these new members to make their company's bottom line look more attractive. Very disappointed a company would treat users this way and makes me reconsider any use of DropBox as well. On the bright side, AppSumo has stepped up and at least offered credits as refund on this deal. It's not the cash invested in the deal, but it is certainly better than being ignored disregarded. I'd never work with these guys or buy one of their products or services in the future.
Pros:
None. (Had unrealized potential though.)
Cons:
"Con" is definitely the right word...
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One thing I hate in all of these is the tone of the email. It was crafted to be a good news since they were ‘acquired’ by Dropbox. Then again, when you finished reading, nothing is to be gained by the customer because they are totally shutting down the services and you only have 20 days to migrate your website.
When you re-read the whole email, it sounded like they’re gloating about their bright future, only that the customers will have to contend taking out their stuff by 21 December based on a notice given last 1 December.
Olman from Appsumo has been very gracious about this, and tne Appsumomfamily really did step up.
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Yes same happened to me, How is this even possible with no refunds for the original appsumo backers!!??
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I'm setting up an account now! If I like it and can get it to run all of the bells, whistles, and functions that I need I might just move my entire media company over! It looks beautiful so far, and has so many more tools than what I'm currently offered!
Really nice! Might try this for a side project. One question though - does Verst support a comments section on posts? Didn't notice it on any of the example sites I looked through.
@alexandercatter Thanks for checking it out Alex! We're trying to figure out where comments fit on the road map. Obviously most of the discussion happens on Facebook/Twitter these days. We're also cognizant of how quickly comments can turn into a spam farm. We won't release a solution unless we think we've improved it in some way. Is that a dealbreaker for what you're trying to accomplish? Would love to hear more!
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@garettpress Thanks for the explanation, that makes sense, and spam is definitely a consideration. Not necessarily a dealbreaker, but I do think a comment system is a really important direct touchpoint with an audience, especially for individual authors for whom Verst seems well-suited. How I see it:
1. Personally, if I'm finding interesting articles through Google searches and newsletters, I don't necessarily track the author/publishing site back to social channels and engage there.
2. I also wouldn't necessarily expect it of new readers, who might be interested enough if there's a convenient/direct way to share a thought (in turn, early feedback for me as creator), but not want to take the time to track down a social conversation.
3. Especially if it's a perennial topic, I'm more interested in seeing the conversation happen directly on the page, and be able to see older replies that can stay relevant in a comment thread that social isn't really built for.
That said, understandably if a site/author is churning out a new piece for 'content marketing' daily, the comments section is usually barren, but I also am inherently less interested in a 'conversation' around that stuff. : )
Hope that's useful! Happy to chat more on it.
@alexandercatter Incredibly useful! Personally, I agree with you 100%, and I've been pushing the team in that direction. I often find myself browsing deep through comments on some of my favorite fitness/wellness blogs. Love hearing people's individual experiences and real-world feedback on the topic at hand. It's actually great to screenshot your argument here and use it as Exhibit A as I continue to make the case. :)
I understand the pushback from my team on how quickly comments sections turn into ghost towns, and how difficult they are to moderate. Perhaps in the near-term we can do a lightweight FB/Disqus integration -- but I would love for us to to bring some real innovation to the way we integrate comments, the same we we've done for optimization and analytics. I have a few ideas around engagement features that might make the feedback a lot more rich and colorful.
So much nice thinking here to help writers create better content. For someone who writes on Medium these days, I wish I had the data-driven tools as well. @jasonfried should be adding this to his wish list!
@kunalslab@jasonfried Wow - your words mean a lot to us Kunal! We've spent a lot of time huddled in tiny conference rooms and talking to publishers trying to absolve them of their pain points. Glad that's coming through!
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It would be interesting to learn about integrations. Will it have any commenting system ? What about marketing automation tools, mainly email marketing tools.
@paulo_andrade1 Oooo great question! 1) Commenting we're hesitant on. In the past few years the conversation has shifted so heavily to Facebook/Twitter that website comments have become a bit of ghost town (mostly with promotional/spam content). We wouldn't release something there unless we can make a major improvement to the functionality and filtering. --- 2) We're about to launch an email collection box that will connect directly to your MailChimp account (or export as a .csv). However, email is something we're VERY interested in baking into the platform. We've heard that publishers spend upwards of two hours in some cases formatting their weekly newsletter and we know we can simplify/automate that in a pretty "magical" way :) -- I would bet on that showing in a few months time. -- 3) We're also opening up the ability to connect Google Analytics, but mostly, we want to build crucial functionality directly into the platform so it's all integrated and works together harmoniously, akin to the Apple hardware universe (when it used to "just work")
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@garettpress , 1) I believe that most professional bloggers want to build a community around what they write about. In order to build it, you need to engage. Thats why commenting is important. You can integrate with a tool and let it optional. Even if you dont let people comment directly, a form with something like: what do you think about? and a place for the reader to put an email and a text is nice. Of course, tagging is essential so, I can tag people around their interest in my articles. 2) Dont forget to allow tagging ! Everybody is segmenting right now. With a tag, I can create a autoresponder for each article or groups of articles. Good to know that you are creating a newsletter but it would be cooler to have a simple email sequence for each post. Newsletter are a little impersonal. ... I believe people are more interested in conversations...
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@garettpress another thing that is important. Don't forget the rest of the world ! Let people edit stuff. For example, today if 01/03/2017 here in Brazil. If you are in USA, it is 03/01/2017 right ? To avoid this date formatting problem, allow the option to remove dates.
@paulo_andrade1 1) I personally agree with you 100% on comments haha, I'm trying to assuage the team to get on my side as well. I just forwarded around your comment because I think you make the argument really nicely. Community is so important, and that's an aspect we haven't tackled just yet! Perhaps in the near term we can an FB/Disqus comments integration. Thanks for helping my cause :) -- 2) We are revising our current "Content Categories" system to be a "Tags" system. Definitely seeing the preference there. Can you explain the "simple email sequence" idea a little more? Very interested
@paulo_andrade1 Ahhh! Another astute catch. We're trying to do some purposeful limiting in terms of editing so that we can maintain "unbreakable design" -- basically, we've put in some rules to make sure people can't make shitty looking websites. That's why we have certain gallery styles, certain image embed options, limited fonts, etc. -- Of course we'll expand these options over time, but always within the confines of making sure nothing looks crappy :) -- However, I think international date formatting is a very logical toggle. Apologies that we haven't gotten to spend time on internationalizing the platform yet, but we will!
@denzil_doyle Hey Denzil! Great question. -- That is not something we offer at the moment. Of course as an engineering-centric company, we greatly admire the world of open source software. However, with Verst, we're trying to create a closed, seamless environment (kind of like Apple's hardware ecosystem) so that everything "just works" and always looks really great. -- For that reason, our design system is fully modular. You can combine any of the elements in any way you'd like, and we can be 99% sure it'll look pretty awesome, and 100% sure nothing will break or glitch out. -- Obviously, at the moment there are only a limited number of these design options we've cooked up, because we've been focused on getting the product launch-ready. -- But now we can go back to expanding our design diversity. As we add more styles the number of combinations grows exponentially. Perhaps we can open up a way to submit styles for us to integrate. -- How does this play into your Verst experience so far?
@steven_simoni Thanks Steven! Did you hook up a domain? Can I see? :)
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@garettpresshttp://www.stevensimoni.com/ No content, but just tried your onboarding. But I have had my name as a domain for a long time, maybe I will get around to posting my projects and hosting with Verst now.
@steven_simoni Oh cool! The getting started content looks pretty hawt :) -- It's definitely an easy way to get started with a parked domain. I did it (work in progress) GarettPress.com
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Verst
Whale by Facebook
Whale by Facebook
Whale by Facebook
Whale by Facebook
Whale by Facebook
Lot of hate going on for these guys right now. They used a lifetime AppSumo offer to spike revenue and users, and then as soon as the refund period ended they sent out the notice about being acquired by DropBox and said they were shuttering the service in just a couple weeks. No refunds are being provided to the AppSumo buyers and all inquiries are being told to basically chase AppSumo for their dough. There is no way these guys didn't know they were shopping their company around and used these new members to make their company's bottom line look more attractive. Very disappointed a company would treat users this way and makes me reconsider any use of DropBox as well. On the bright side, AppSumo has stepped up and at least offered credits as refund on this deal. It's not the cash invested in the deal, but it is certainly better than being ignored disregarded. I'd never work with these guys or buy one of their products or services in the future.
Pros:None. (Had unrealized potential though.)
Cons:"Con" is definitely the right word...
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