Hello y'all! 👋
Looks like we're slowly getting back on track with our updates. Let us know whether you like more in-depth (= longer) or more frequent updates (= shorter)! Last time we had a big update: Our landing page is now live. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, we've been diligently working on the Flottform demo and could show it to interested people in private video chats, sharing pictures from a multitude of devices. We are going to publish an online demo to let all of you try it out very soon.
While we were working on the parts for the demo, we thought about tailoring it to specific use case scenarios. So let us recap our thoughts about finding our potential clients.
Plugin for E-Commerce 🔌
Since the beginning of working on our product, we thought about possible markets. We considered the possibility of positioning Flottform as a plugin, seamlessly integrating into popular e-commerce platforms like Shopify, Shopware, or WooCommerce. We thought that the B2B market may be a good first use case for Flottform and we could even inject small server parts into the plugins, allowing us to not need to provide and maintain our own server at all. This raised crucial questions that needed thoughtful consideration:
Identifying the right plugin stores:
We need to find out which plugin stores aligned with our goals in terms of size, reach, and the volume of B2B customers. There are a lot of e-commerce platforms which offer some kind of marketplace for plugins and extensions. Which one suits us best?
Securing a featured rank:
Once we've figured out which plugin store suits us best, we need to find a way to stand out there. Shopify, Shopware and WooCommerce each have 6.000, 4.000 or 900 different third-party apps on offer. How can you be featured there?
Cost of implementation:
Every platform has their own APIs to integrate our product as a plugin. How much work would it be to get Flottform to work with the form solutions they provide? How deep can we hook the solution into the platform itself? Is it possible to deploy server parts as well?
Our biggest concerns were the limitations of these platforms. As we explored this avenue, our perspectives began to shift, leading us to reconsider our approach.
Changing Course ↩️
While the idea of using Flottform as a plugin for e-commerce platforms was intriguing, their limitations would make our tool lose a lot of its flexibility and broader accessibility. This led us to an important decision: Flottform will become a set of scripts and modules for easy integration into existing forms.
This strategic shift was driven by the desire to give developers the ability to seamlessly integrate Flottform into their web forms. By providing modules, Flottform will not be limited to specific e-commerce platforms. Instead, it offers a universal solution for developers looking for advanced multiplayer form functionality.
Flottform should work with any STUN and TURN servers, which are necessary for WebRTC. We will offer a cloud-based subscription service for this though: For companies who want to quickly enhance their forms, it should be faster and cheaper to buy our solution than rolling out and maintaining their own self-hosted version.
Next steps 👣
Going forward, we will present two use cases on our website: One for programmers and another one focusing on customer experience. We will continue adding use case scenarios for non-developers depending on the feedback we receive. If you are interested in integrating Flottform for a new use case, let us know and we will happily present your case on our website as well.
We're also preparing for meetups as there we have a great opportunity to share our vision, market the solution and provide an overview of WebRTC. If you happen to live in Bavaria, keep an eye out, Jörn will try and present at local meetups, probably starting in April 2024.
Expect a lot of cool new updates to our page and an online demonstration to get a better look and feel for it. We have lots of additional ideas about what Flottform could do but before we get to that, we need to find out whether there is enough interest for it. Stay tuned and keep following us on LinkedIn , Twitter / X, or subscribe to our newsletter to receive the latest updates! Expect our next update before mid-March.
