Crowdsourced List of Discounts Due to COVID-19
We launched a crowdsourced list of discounts to help you during the COVID-19 pandemic.
👉 Explore AidTable
✍️ Submit Link
Here is how we built it in less than a day…
Story
Last weekend at Oblik Studio we were talking about how we could possibly lower our expenses because of the uncertainty ahead. One of the ideas that we were discussing, was to collect links of products that are offering discounts for people and companies affected by the coronavirus crisis.
After a short discussion, we decided to share the list publicly. It was obvious that this is a potential side project that might help other people and businesses during the turbulent times we are all currently experiencing.
Scroll below to see the statistics from the launch day. 👇
The Process
We’ve been a remote-friendly company for 5+ years, applying our values to everything we do anywhere we do it. That’s how we managed to organically transition to approaching the new, quarantine-related, problems and could focus more on actually optimizing our newfound workflow challenges.
Once we had the idea, we wanted to develop it in a low-input, high-impact manner, and to be ready to launch in less than 24 hours.
We had an online meeting discussing the current crisis situation and what we should do to optimize our company costs. In this meeting, we practically did the ideation and conceptualization of the project.
Objective Definition → Ideation💡 → Conceptualisation ✍️ → Planning 📑→ Research & Content 👩⚕️ → Design 🖌 → Dev 💻 → Launch 🚀
1. Objective Definition
- We were exploring options on how to optimize company and personal expenses.
2. Ideation
- Many companies are starting to offer discounts during the pandemic crisis.
- Let’s make a list of discounts due to the COVID-19 and use it.
- You know what, let’s actually share the list with everyone!
We need that list ASAP and most likely other people need it now, too.
2. Conceptualization
- We need that list ASAP and most likely other people need it now, too.
- We can’t allocate any resources right now, because we are quite busy with client work. How can we approach that then? The no-code way.
- Google Spreadsheets + Forms to the rescue! Actually, let’s use Airtable, as the cool kids do.
- We should get a domain to share that list easier.
- If we have a domain we could also have a simple page where we can embed the Airtable. This way we can add additional information about the project, and overall — to have more control over it.
- By launching it as a website we can use it as a satellite project to promote the next one that we will launch in a week.
We can’t allocate any resources right now, because we are quite busy with client work. How can we approach it then? The no-code way.
3. Planning
- Create and prepare the Airtable.
- Start collecting content.
- Design, code and upload the webpage.
- Design marketing graphics.
- Launch it.
Everything should be done super fast and smart. No distractions and additional ideas for improvement are allowed.
4. Research & Content
- Two of my colleagues started browsing manually a few of the largest tech sites and blogs, looking for articles about companies that lowered their pricing.
- Three hours later we had 88 entries of companies and products that offer discounts due to the COVID-19 crisis, via Airtable web clipper.
Basically, we had everything needed to launch.
- We were having trouble with coming up with a catchy name. However, we stuck to what we usually do — we created a spreadsheet where we were collecting domain names throughout the day. Later on, we just got one of them. Although we weren’t extremely happy with it — we had no time to overthink this.
5. Design
- We set the basic layout in Figma.
- Selected modern typefaces and a color scheme.
- Then we agreed on the overall visual direction and started coding.
Setting the design direction was allotted less than 30 mins, so — no fancy graphics!
- While we were coding the landing page, one of us started working on the marketing visuals — static and motion graphics for ProductHunt, Twitter, Facebook, Dribbble and Instagram. Check them out below. 👇
6. Development
- Plain PHP and CSS files. That’s all we would need to embed the Airtable.
- One hour of coding is how long it took us to get the entire thing online.
- Deployed it via FTP. What a funny feeling this is. No, build processes and deployment pipelines — just drag and drop FTP client. Oh, yes!
Let’s go psycho — just plain PHP files, no CSS preprocessor, and no JS.
Launch
We posted the site in ProductHunt, IndieHackers, DesignerNews, and Dribbble. People started submitting entries through the form. Eventually, we saw that there was some interest in the project. 👇
Launch Day Statistics
Here is what we’ve got in the first 24 hours:
- 3200+ people visited the site;
- 157 upvoted it on ProductHunt; #5 product of the day;
- 36 people submitted resources — from 88 to 124 entries;
- Spent $13 on the domain name and $0 on marketing.
Are these numbers good enough? Read below.👇
Conclusion
No fancy process and tools and no trendy buzz-words were used in the making of this list. So, is this a shareworthy story? Are these launch day numbers good enough? I don’t really care.
Are these numbers good enough? I don’t really care.
The point is that we created something that is helpful for us and hopefully for some other people. Even though lots of people and businesses are struggling now, many companies are being supportive. We know how hard this is and we applaud that.
We encourage you to submit a link to a discount you’ve found. You can help someone in need — after all, in these unprecedented times of crisis, we should all stay united and support each other.
Oblik Studio is a result-driven design and development company. Follow us on Twitter, Dribbble or Instagram. We are available for new projects.
