Elements target market

Elements
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Occasionally the concern pops up that Elements hasn’t defined itself or a target market. First, I think it’s way too early to say Elements hasn’t defined itself, it hasn’t even gone public yet. Hard to define something one cannot see in a finished state. :wink:

Second, I respectfully disagree, I think Realmac is beginning to define their market. This post has a video in which Dan describes the market a bit. If you haven’t seen it, take a look. I am confident that in time, a market will exist. Elements is a breakout product that is going to be a powerhouse. Once people get to play with the demo and see what can be done so easily and quickly, then look at the flexibility and the ways it can be expanded, it’s going to be awesome!

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Hi again, I really think that for any commercial product, you must first define your target clientele in order to carry out the feasibility study of the project. It’s good to create a pair of scissors, but it won’t be very “commercial” if there are only bald people… :grimacing:

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I’m still not sure who RM feels their customer is. As a design-dev (in a previous life), if I was open to coding I would use something like Astro or 11ty, both of which provide a ton of flexibility and are also open source. Today however, I’m more interested in a WYSIWYG solution, but every time I see “just use CHAT-GPT and copy/paste this code (that many users don’t often understand) into Elements” I tune out. If I wanted to work with code, I’d just work with code.

I know someone will pipe up that this is a feature for power-users (and that’s true), but if it also becomes a primary means of interacting with Elements to fill-in feature gaps, then not only is the WYSIWYG aspect of Elements lessened, but also is the potential need for 3rd party components, thereby placing the entire burden of development and support of Elements on Realmac.

With limited resources, and increased user demands/expectations I wouldn’t be surprised to see copy/pasted AI generated snippets become the norm for many Elements users within a couple of years. Which unfortunately, isn’t a product I’m terribly interested in using.

I’m hoping we’ll see some clarity on who the audience for Elements is in the not-too-distant future, as well as how RM envisions users primarily interacting with Elements.

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Same!

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The reverse! :crazy_face:

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This came up pre-beta when price was being discussed. I’m of the opinion Elements targets the people who like to build and create their own sites without the constraints of strict rules and conditions.

Wordpress allows you to easily create a basic site and have it hosted for free but it’s a rabbit hole of plugins, themes and add ons which make costs rise. There’s also a significant learning curve - especially when you get in to the more complex themes (as I’ve done in the past).

Elements is far more intuitive (and WYSIWYG) than Wordpress and it will only get better with maturity. From a cost perspective, it’s very reasonably priced but having a ‘one click’ option which looked after hosting and SSL etc would be a huge benefit.

I don’t see Elements so much a competitor to Wix and Squarespace etc. They have a fairly expensive, ongoing cost and seem to target the creatives market who are often looking for a selling/eCommerce option. I’ve played with most of them and found them frustrating. If your site fits into the shoebox designs they offer it’s a great option but for me, that wasn’t the case.

I see Elements’ biggest competitors to be the web site builder which hosting companies and registrars offer. A colleague with zero experience created quite a reasonable single page website with the GoDaddy builder and it had everything he needed - nice banner, hero image, gallery, contact form, cookie popup, and was completely responsive. Most have AI options and whilst they’re not perfect, they’re a great start.

Like WP they have a single creation/hosting option making it simple to publish but they still have a learning curve and you’re forced to work in a browser - something I prefer not to do.

Where WP, Squarespace and GoDaddy trample on Elements is in responsiveness. Whilst all the tools are there in Elements, having to manually set everything is both frustrating and annoying compared to the built-in responsiveness of the other options. I find the terminology confusing and the UI fiddly and unreliable - especially when things like scroll bars can affect whether the responsiveness is incorrectly displayed.

I really like Elements and I think the same people who’ve enjoyed Rapidweaver for years will see a huge step forward coming to Elements - and likely for far less cost than using Classic and multiple Stacks.

I’m mindful it’s only a beta and will mature in time so have optimism for the future. Hopefully they can clean up some things and address the responsiveness.

As Elements is aimed at ‘mobile first’ I think responsiveness is their Achilles heel right now. A simple, reliable and cheap hosting option - even as a collab with someone else - is also needed to make it more comparable with the other competitors. I feel people will enjoy using Elements but not many people enjoys shopping for hosts.

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I’ll add one more thing with regards the current betas.

As many of the RM components have been removed (banners, pre-build sections, call to action etc) it has forced the use of Elements towards more complex custom components and manually creating components.

Once these are back and expanded, this will be far less the case and users can go back to the drag and drop, WYSIWYG design paradigm. It’s exciting both options will be available and offers baby steps to start, and complex features for growth.

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Am I right in assuming you are referring to Elements when you say their Achilles heel?

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Yes. WP, Squarespace, Wix, GoDaddy etc have responsiveness built-in - it just works.

I know Elements can be responsive but it’s considerably more effort and I’m not finding it reliable or ‘simple’. As Elements is targeting mobile first, I think it’s important the responsiveness for tablet and desktop be simple - preferably automatic.

For me it’s one of the biggest differentiators between Elements and the others.

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Regarding responsive design, with the other web building tools you mention, the responsiveness is built into the theme or template the customer uses. Pick a nice responsive theme that they offer, and it just works across mobile, tablet, and desktop without having to set up the breakpoints yourself. I don’t even think they offer non-responsive themes/templates anymore.

Obviously RW Elements is going to ship with some pre-built templates/themes out of the box. Not sure if they are going to have the breakpoints set up already (have to ask @dan about that).

I feel like this is an area that third-party developers could explore for RapidWeaver Elements. There’s a lot of opportunity for some creative individuals to start offering/selling fully responsive themes/templates/projects (whatever you want to call them) so Elements users can just fill in the content without having to worry with setting the breakpoints and so forth.

You have the same now with RapidWeaver Classic, most of the pre-built themes on offer are fully responsive. I imagine the same will be the case with Elements.

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This is the point I’m trying to make. As Elements has been built from the ground up as Mobile first, I think built-in responsiveness should be high on the priority list given most other web builders have it.

I accept there’ll be third party developers likely to add to the theme options, but it would be unfortunate for people to have a new, modern design tool which doesn’t do one of the fundamentals required these days.

I’m not trying to over burden @Dan and @bon with feature requests but I feel pretty strongly some sort of automatic/built-in responsiveness should be considered.

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If the “mandatory” purchases start from that moment, I’m really not sure that it costs less than RW/Stacks and a multitude of stacks…

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If we look at Divi (or Elementor) at Wordpress (self-hosted), we get a functional site with all the up-to-date links (let’s say for example a random office with an online appointment schedule, integrated payment, automatic generation of links for video calls), contact forms, newsletter, blog, gallery (with all the effects possible and imaginable, slider, flashing, CTA, … CMS integrated as standard) in three hours (we are the ones who slow down the process by having to enter our information on the keyboard, we speed it up by preparing the prompts for Divi with Chatgpt for example in dictation). The cost of running this site on the Wordpress plugin side will cost the Divi subscription, a Divi plugin and a security solution like Sucuri or Wordfence (around $350) per year. However, the cost should be detailed: divi and its plugin (to choose from several) is per year in the premium version (as many sites as you want) around $250. The security solution applies to a limited number of sites (from one to 10 depending on the option chosen).
With the Elements Pro subscription (without the Developer subscription that I feel is coming from afar…) we are already at around $200 per year.
It is on this kind of calculation that it risks being difficult for the future in the face of the competition that strengthens its offer each month.
When I asked the beta testers for their opinion, it was not only on the ‘technical’ question of the interface and the features of Elements, but also (perhaps above all) on the thoughtful study of the offer: advantages-disadvantages compared to the price and comparison with competitors.
The target has evolved, we finally know that it is no longer for beginners. Ok, but here I agree with Bryan, with an interface that is not practical, the absence of features that are now basic (responsiveness and CMS), the announced need to use add-ons… if I go back to the videos that led me to support Elements before the beta was released, there is an evolution that is in fact a radical change, including in what was announced as a product.
It is on all of this that I believe we have to give an opinion more than on the new beta that is coming and that we do not know.

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Right, so responsiveness is built into Elements, it’s just users have to adjust the breakpoints themselves if they are building the site from the ground up.

With those other web building tools you mentioned (at least WP, Squarespace, and Wix, I don’t know about GoDaddy’s builder), users start with a pre-built template/theme that’s already responsive. They don’t have to set the breakpoints themselves, they’ve already been baked into the theme/template. This is what I’m imagining will happen with Elements, there will be some pre-built themes/templates/project files that will be on offer that have everything set already (including the breakpoints) so users can just fill in their content and publish.

For those that want to build their site from the ground up without using a pre-built theme/template/project, then they will have the flexibility to set the breakpoints up themselves. If this is what you are finding difficult to work with, let us know your feedback on how you feel setting the breakpoints might be made easier.

I’d disagree, currently users are usually purchasing RW, the Stacks plugin, a theme maybe (if they aren’t using a built-in one), a framework if they are wanting to build from the ground up, and various other stacks that they might need to do whatever they are trying to do on their site.

RW Elements will reduce that burden of cost significantly, however there will still be a lot of opportunities for addon products such as pre-built themes, components, etc. to be offered to users.

Using myself as an example, I would just use whatever pre-built themes/templates come pre-shipped with Elements, or I’d buy one, since design is not my strong point and I prefer having some base template to start from that was designed by a design professional. :slightly_smiling_face:

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