Zitecraft: a revolutionaire way of making websites
Life is too nice to post things twice!
With Zitecraft local business owners can turn their Facebook page into a website that is automatically updated with Facebook photos, events and reviews. Besides Facebook content it also shows Yelp & TripAdvisor reviews, Tweets and Foursquare tips. Thanks to all this fresh social media content combined with the fact “webzites” are optimized for local search queries they score really high on Google.
Zitecraft’s motto: “Life is too nice to post things twice!”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_Jhr_R2VZk
Content the same on 80 or 90% of the websites
Barend Jungerius, founder of Zitecraft, noticed content published on hospitality websites is the same in 80 or 90%: contact details, photos, menus and an agenda for special events. Besides that the websites are not or barely up to date: “For example 16 photos could be found on the website while there were 516 on the Facebook page.” Apparently it still takes too much time for small business owners to update their website via a Content Management System (CMS) or it costs them money because to have to ask their webmaster to make the updates.
Application Programming Interfaces
With the rise of APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) the idea came to mind to automate the proces of making websites for the hospitality branche and other local businesses. “I had all building blocks at my disposal in the databases of Facebook, Yelp, Foursquare and Twitter. “With access to this content and my knowledge of SEO for local businesses I started to build.”
Business owners don’t want to use a CMS
The first 10 clients are online and besides bars & restaurants Zitecraft also landed a couple of beauty branche customers. It goes without saying Zitecraft will be improving itself constantly. Recently TripAdvisor reviews were added, a platform getting more important for both tourists as locals. The “chalkboard” on the zite can be used to display special offers & announcements. This is not done via the CMS but via Facebook: when a message with the hashtag #zitecraft is post on Facebook it will appear on the website automatically! The same hashtag trick can be used to decide which Facebook photo albums should be published on the website. “Our goal is that our clients have to use our mini CMS as less as possible. By using Facebook they can keep their website up-to-date making the knife cut both ways”.
No need for Google Adwords or an SEO specialist
The Amsterdam based startup offers local businesses one of the cheapest and easiest ways to generate more online exposure & sales. Facebook events and photo albums get their own landing page resulting in websites with potentially more than 100 pages. Custom pages can be added to let visitors (and Google) know what makes their business special. A webzite costs €250 per year and the setup costs are also €250. Spending money on Google Adwords or an SEO specialist is no longer needed. Using Facebook on a regular basis will do the trick, all other things are taken care off by Zitecraft.
Team expansion
Zitecraft built relationships with freelance developers and is meanwhile looking for an entrepreneurial sales & business development professional and a front-end developer. “For me one of the most important things is potential team members have great affinity with social media. Someone without a Facebook account doesn’t stand a chance.”
Partnerships
Partnerships will become very important for the startups, a cooperation with for example a big brewery would be ideal: the beer needs to flow and a good website that ranks high in Google helps a lot.
Conferences
Zitecraft is selected for the Bootstrap your Startup program taking place during The Next Web Conference in Amsterdam in May: https://thenextweb.com/conference/europe/startups/index. Of course the startup was also present at the UPRISE festival. These conferences will open doors for possible partnerships and boost brand awareness with the public, entrepreneurs & investors.
