The problem
Think of the neighbourhood nail salon, the tattoo studio, the stationery shop that sells through Instagram. They all need a place to show what they do, their hours, their address and how to reach them. Almost none of them has one.
It is not for lack of wanting. The two options that exist are bad for someone with one room and three employees. An agency charges too much. A do-it-yourself site builder opens a blank screen and asks the person to pick fonts, colours, section order, copy. That is too many decisions for someone who is not a designer, and most give up halfway.
The result is a business that only exists inside a social network, with no address of its own on the internet and hard to find on Google.
The constraints
The decisions
Build from ready-made blocks, not a blank screen
Instead of starting from nothing, the person picks from sections that are already designed: introduction, services, testimonials, frequently asked questions, contact. They switch the style of each one, write in their own business details and see the result straight away.
The decision that defines the product most is what we do not let people choose. The fewer design decisions left to someone who is not a designer, the more pages get finished.
A free-form editor where everything can be changed. Discarded: total freedom is exactly the blank screen that makes people give up.
The price shows up while the page is being built
Every choice shows what it costs, right away. The person knows the price before talking to anyone, and the orders come from people who have already decided it fits their budget. From the end of the builder, one tap opens WhatsApp.
Price only after a conversation. Discarded: to a small business, "get in touch for a quote" sounds like "it is expensive", and the conversation never starts.
The order arrives complete, and people build the site
When the person finishes, PiKiTo receives an organised summary of everything they chose and wrote: blocks, styles, copy, photos. The first version of the site starts from that summary, built by us, without asking again what has already been answered.
Generate the site automatically at the end of the builder. Discarded: an automatic result comes out generic, and what the client is buying is a site that looks like theirs.
Our own site is the sample of what we sell
Whoever sells websites is judged by their own. That is why it works in Portuguese and English, is found on Google in the right language, can be used by people who browse with only a keyboard or a screen reader, and has light and dark themes. It is where a good share of my contributions went.
Leave those details for later and focus only on collecting orders. Discarded: a website seller's site that does not show up on Google collects nothing.
The result
PiKiTo is live at pikitopages.com, with the page builder, the instant quote and a portfolio of real client sites already delivered.
The product belongs to two partners. Guilherme Balduino Lopes is the co-author and wrote most of the site; I share product and engineering with him, and mainly took care of how the site shows up on Google, the two languages, accessibility and improvements to the building experience.
Beyond the finished site, we also handle the part that usually stalls afterwards: domain, hosting and publishing. Order and conversion figures belong to the business and stay between the partners.
tech sheet
- stack
- Next.js · TypeScript · Tailwind CSS · Resend · Vercel
- role
- Partner and co-author, product and engineering