Ask HN: Prototype a business idea (Low code and cheap web app and CRM)
1) I have 5 business ideas and I want to build a web app for customer applications. I don't know where to start as I'm not a dev (yet).
It will be a couple of forms for customer data, a hosted card capture page (probably stripe or worldpay or something), some blog pages for SEO, some way to spin up lots of landing pages for split tests, some way to aggregate and compare traffic conversion so I can optimise over time.
These requirements seem pretty generic: open a bank account, insurance policy, window cleaning subscription, etc. all the same sort of journey and requirements. If I can build a generic journey then I can wrap any product over it. If the business works then I can worry about building a robust, sustainable site later when I'm making money.
Simplest build is probably Wordpress + Elementor? Although I don't know PHP and WYSIWYG editors are heavy. At the other end of the scale I could write from scratch an MVC web app and host it on AWS.
I don't know how to evaluate the options, and I'm thinking that I must be missing some options, surely there is some Off The Shelf generic drag and drop, cheap web journey builder that will give a decent simple MVP launch? I'm limited by lack of ability but freed by my lack of ability :) What should I do?
2) I need a CRM to manage the applications and navigate the ones I want to work. I can create pipelines based on what data is missing on each application and I can create retargeting messaging campaigns in CustomerIO etc.
My friend is doing something similar in strapi but he's frustrated with it and I can't understand it anyway.
The CRM also needs linking to the analytics so I can flag cases as fraud etc that feedback into my dataset and traffic sources. I can design a SQL schema that stores the states of everything I need pretty easily and then run a report on it? But I can't build an API atm :)