Moonfruit Lounge

There's been some exciting progress on the HTLM5 site publishing project. The black ops dev team have been squirreling away to rewrite how your sites are published and adding in, bit by bit, the features to support full HTML5 site views.

The story so far

Just to recap, we started work on this in 2010, by rewriting the way we stored your site contents, e.g. text, images, links, etc. We wanted to abstract the content from the design so we could choose to display the sites differently for different platforms. The first task was mobile displays using HTML5, which we did in Mar 2011, and then updated last month with our new mobile editor, giving you greater design and layout flexibility for the mobile version.

Mobile editor in action

But the biggest bit of work has always been the full site HTML5. Not only was it a more complicated job to make the sites identical in Flash and HTML, but we also wanted to wait for HTML5 to be more widely adopted to ensure a consistent experience for your visitors (as it is only fully supported on the most modern browsers). In January we showed you a preview of sites in HTML5, and showed you how this compared to Flash, and now automating this process for all sites is starting to come together.

How it will work

Pretty much the same. The great thing is that the edit tools you know and love will stay exactly the same. You will continue to edit your sites using our existing software, but we'll add the ability to publish the end result in HTML5, rather than the usual Flash. As we highlighted in the first article, some elements may need some tweaking by you (e.g. Fonts) to ensure they will look the same in each environment, but once that's done the experience will be the same in HTML5 from then onwards.

Where we are

We've tied together the editor with some of the core elements of a webpage which are now showing in HTML5 rather than Flash. This includes, text, images, some graphic elements and the page structure itself. Here's a little video of how it's currently working and some of the things you can do.

Here's a screen grabs of the same site on an iPad. So you can see it's very much the same :-)

IPad view in HTML5

But there's still a way to go, which is why this won't be released until later in the year, with end Q3 our target. We've got to tie back in the menus, the blog, the shop, HTML widgets (shouldn't be too hard, they're HTML already!), and lots of other bits and pieces.

Many of you have asked about how this will affect the load time of sites, which should also be much faster as we'll share the hard work between our big servers and the HTML rendering skills of modern browsers. So great news there too. (You can see the difference in load time in the video).

So that's it for now. We'll tell you more when we've got more to show you, but we're super excited about these changes and working hard to get them to you as fast as we can!

This article was taken from the May 2012 issue of Wired magazine and features Wendy Tan White, founder of Moonfruit. Read the original article here.

Klaus Nyengaard had witnessed the success of desktop applications for PCs and predicted that the same would happen with mobile phones. So in 2000, he created marketplace Mobli, secured funding and amassed the world's second-largest portfolio of mobile apps. Mobli predicted exactly how the 3G smartphone market would develop. Its mistake was expecting it to develop five years sooner than it did. "If you read reports in 2000, people were talking about 3G being just around the corner. We'd have smartphones in two years," explains Nyengaard, who is now CEO of Just-Eat.com. It was another five years before there was enough 3G coverage to make it a viable business, and eight years before the launch of Apple's App Store. "It's just as bad being too early as it is too late," he muses. Mobli's prematurity, combined with the founders' bullish resistance to accepting funding that gave them a runway longer than six months, meant that their coffers ran dry and they had to close.

Too much funding can be just as damaging as too little. Not only does funding have to be paid back, often at a multiple, but it also makes entrepreneurs lose focus, as Wendy Tan White (right) discovered with website builder Moonfruit. "We went from seed to a few million in funding within six months," she says. "That wasn't enough time to learn who our market was and what core features people were interested in. You end up spending money on the wrong stuff." White then shrank the company from 60 to two people: "In the dark years we learned to generate our own income and adopted what's now called the lean startup model."

The delicate funding balance is made more precarious by the fact that everyone at the table the VCs, angel investors, the CEO with phantom stock is keen to make money out of you. School for Startups founder Doug Richard took other people's advice and sold his company Visual Software for shares instead of cash, which lost 99 per cent of their value within weeks. "Everyone has a different set of incentives. Nobody has your interest, so stop whining and make your own decisions," he says.

One of the most terrifying decisions you need to make is to quit the day job. "If you don't commit full-time, you won't have the impetus to go and find customers or raise capital," says Adil Abrar, director of Sidekick Studios. He built gaming platform Budge, which fizzled out because he ran another company. "There was no real incentive to make it work because our mortgage didn't depend on it."

Assertive decision-making is also critical when it comes to firing a misfit, as Simon Campbell took too long to discover with his web-applications company Conexia. Aged 23, he was dazzled by an experienced former Oracle salesman who had charisma and impressive contacts. The startup agreed to pay him more than everyone else in the hope that he'd make sales. After a month without signing anything, it became clear that he wasn't right for the job, but Campbell kept the faith that he'd come through. He never did, and tried to sue the company when it did ask him to leave three months later. Conexia didn't fail, but the incident zapped morale and set the business back by 12 months.

"Work out what's right for the business and what it can afford," Campbell explains. "If sales people want a massive base, there have to be question marks about what they will deliver. If you realise you have made a mistake, get rid of them as soon as you can."

Just as important as people is the place you start your business, as Luke Johnson, chairman of Risk Capital Partners, discovered when trying to launch mussels-and-frites restaurant chain Belgo in New York. "We completely underestimated the cultural and economic differences between the UK and America," he explains. "The restaurant business in New York is much more competitive than in the UK and with much lower expected returns." Two years and $5 million (£3 million) later, Johnson and his partners retreated from the US.

Even with the right timing, people, place and product, you're not immune from failure, as Eric Ries, author of The Lean Startup, discovered when he started Catalyst Recruiting out of his Yale dormitory. He explains: "We had a really beautiful business plan - with census data, market research, complicated models and strict customer-acquisition budgets. However, we just didn't know exactly who our customers were." Ries classifies his mistake as "achieving failure": being so focused on executing a plan that you don't ever pause to assess if it's good or not, thus wasting energy going in the wrong direction. The solution? To continually test the market and iterate.

The Good Web Guide asked Wendy Tan White, founder of Moonfruit, to share some of her favourite websites. See the article here.

Wendy Tan White is the founder and CEO of Moonfruit, a design-led DIY website builder company - "We do all the hard work so that you can be free to design your own website in just a few hours with no technical knowledge." Wendy's aim is to democratise the web and to this end, Moonfruit has just launched a Shopbuilder which means you can create your own shop which will publish to mobile and Facebook automatically. Since the launch in October 2011, over 60,000 shop sites have been developed and worldwide over 4 million websites have been created in the last 12 years, 1.5 million in the last 12 months. Wendy has won many awards but winning Entrepreneur of the Year at the CWT everywoman in Technology Awards in 2011 was a highlight.

As well as running Moonfruit, Wendy is mother to a 7-year-old and 4-year old. She lives in west London with Joe, her husband and the COO of Moonfruit.

WENDY'S FAVOURITE SITES

Designers Guild - When my home feels neglected (as it frequently does), I make it feel better by treating it to something bright and colourful from this stylish homeware shop. An antidote to greige!

Tech Crunch - The site that has all the up-to-date news and stories on the tech world including start-ups and investing.

Reuters - Another site which is excellent for all news as well as tech news - and (declaration of interest coming up) it includes a regular blog by Joe White.

Water Forward - A simple idea to provide fresh water for 1 billion people who don't yet have access. You can easily donate $10 using social media and to spread the word.

The Kernel - Edited by Milo Yiannopoulos, this site publishes high-quality writing about the way technology is rapidly changing our lives and is not afraid of debate, comment and controversy!

Hsaba - My father is Burmese so this blog is one of the many that I follow to source recipes and chat about Burmese life and food.

Pinterest - This online pinboard helps you to organise your life and to share the things you love: recipes, kids, photos, crafts, storage, motivational words and much much more.

Templates

Our Design team have been busy and today we released five new templates (of which four are shop templates). Plus, we’ve also updated all the existing shop templates to include the new 'Variants' feature from the last release, as well as the 'Duplicate a Product' option.

The New Templates

While there are only five new templates in this round we’re continuing to create new and exciting templates to add to our already growing template portfolio. We hope you like them. And if there's a specific type of template you'd like to see please let us know.

Next release

Our developers are also hard at work on a number of projects including the key HTML5 project aimed for Q3.

But for the minute, the next project out the door will be our first version of the mobile editor. Just a reminder of what you can expect: it will permit mobile version styling (colours), allow you to include or exclude content from the mobile version and enable the re-ordering of content. And when is it out? Hopefully by the end of March - if testing goes well.

Your Say on the Shop

Finally, while our 'Next Features?' survey is gathering some fantastic feedback from our customers we’d like to get just a few more of you contributing your thoughts and votes on what we should develop next on the shop. Remember this is your chance to have a say on what you’d like to see us release next for the shop. So, don’t be shy, please give us your views by casting your vote in our quick and simple Shop survey.

And that's me for another blog.

We are looking for an Online Content Manager to join our team. Could this be you or do you know someone who will fit this role? Please check out the job description below.

Job description

Job title: Online Content Editor
Department: Marketing
Location: Eastcastle Street, London, W1W 8EA
Responsible to: Head of Digital Marketing

The package and perks

Salary according to qualifications and experience. Moonfruit offers generous benefits including annual bonus, private health care, pension scheme and 25 days holiday.

The company

Moonfruit.com is a small business that is growing fast. Having been around for over 10 years, it is now the market leader within the UK and is a real entrepreneurial success story. With the continuous goal of democratising web-design and ecommerce for everyone, Moonfruit.com provides design led DIY website and shop builder tools at an extremely low cost, providing accessibility to everyone.

The opportunity

The job of Online Content Editor will be primarily concerned around the website Moonfuit.com and additionally, our Shop and Sitebuilder products. The main audience focus will be sole enterprise, small businesses and other organisations that require low cost online coverage. Our audience is worldwide, however short-term we have a particular focus on the UK and America. This is expected to expand over time and become multi-lingual.

Job role and responsibility

• In line with our brand guidelines and editorial brief, develop, build and manage our ongoing content strategy including research, sourcing, creation, editing and maintenance
• In parallel with our development team, build a categorised content management process with a change control mechanism
• Play a central and active role in all content related matters (projects and initiatives)
• Create and update product/web/blog pages
• Write articles and guides that can be used for both on-site and viral activities. Also support PR strategy and content creation
• Use knowledge of SEO best practice to create effective content
• Compile and organically evolve the Moonfruit content editorial guidelines
• Absorb, understand and execute a style of writing representative of the Moonfruit image and brand values
• Liaise directly with content and project stakeholders to ensure that material is produced in line with technical expectations
• Enhance customer landing page conversions with effective messaging and CTAs
• Through use of available online analytics, understand the value of content and change
• Present and report upon content developments financial impact
• Tailor content to support our partner activity
• Where required, work with the CEO, COO and other company directors
• Use external agency knowledge and resource to optimise content opportunity

The team

The Moonfruit.com team consists of web designers, developers, infrastructure & systems, testers, marketing and customer support.

Duties overview

• Strategy in line with company and marketing goals
• Process, management and change control
• Creation of multi purpose/functional content for all Moonfruit channels and audiences
• Timely delivery of content for projects and initiatives
• Enhance marketing activity through content (SEO and conversions)
• Content entrepreneurialism and creative thinking
• Quality control (legal, brand guidelines, editorial guidelines)
• Compliance (Intellectual Property, CAP codes)
• Content ROI (Understanding the financial value of change)
• Team and agency liaison

Skills, qualifications and experience

• Educational level – Graduate or equivalent experience
• Skills and experience
• Online content strategy experience. Preferably in or for the small business area
• Online editing experience. Preferably in or for the small business area
• Experience of editing online content to optimise for SEO and usability
• Good knowledge of consumer behaviour and best practice techniques for content conversion
• Experience of developing and using content management systems (processes)
• High standard of written and spoken English
• First-class copy-editing and proof-reading skills
• Good project-management skills
• Good understanding of copyright law, plagiarism and related content legal issues

Personality and character

• Self starting, team-player
• Practical and efficient
• Confident
• Articulate
• Adaptable
• Careful, meticulous attention to detail
• Excellent organiser and problem-solver
• Able to prioritise
• Ability to work calmly and effectively under pressure, handling multiple projects to tight deadlines

Some travel within the UK may be necessary from time to time

How to apply

To apply for this role please send a cover letter and a copy of your CV to jobs@moonfruit.com