I admit it. I’m a web and app-development dummy. The Mobile Ministry Forum website is designed and maintained by professionals, and I do my best to stay out of its back-end work. I intended to continue being a web and app dummy, but then two things happened…
First, the war in Afghanistan ended, so the U.S. is suddenly preparing to resettle ~100,000 Afghans by the end of 2022. These men, women, and kids are EXTREMELY unreached (0.01 to 0.02% Christian), and they have EXTREME physical needs. Each person was only allowed to bring a 15-pound bag, and they typically have no savings or family to help them here. I, and many other American believers have been moved by their plight. When I looked for ways to help and get churches involved, I noticed no website was devote to help Christians serve Afghans.
Second, Brian, from the Mobile Media Forum’s team, recommended Beezer, a new company offering an amazing introductory price for their “Drag & Drop” Progressive Web App (PWA) Creator. PWAs are super-charged websites that offer extra app features like the ability to install an icon on your phone screen, get notifications, and even work offline to an extent. Brian used Beezer for just hours to develop a great new app for the Media, Mobiles and Ministry curriculum. I thought, ‘Why don’t I take a crack at creating a “one-stop-shop website equipping Christians serve their Afghan neighbors?’
What I needed to do:
- Invent a name for the website. I could have used almost any name under the sun, since a Beezer PWA adds “.beezer.com” to the end of any app. Hoping to avoid that, I went to GoDaddy (a company selling domains) and tested potential site names. LoveAfghans.com was available for $5/year, so I grabbed it.
- Learn what American Christians needed to know and tools they will want as they work to bless Afghans. After spending lots of time doing web research and asking some experts, I created several categories of tools that will be easy to find on the site/app.
- Find pretty photos of Afghans for the site. I visited Unsplash and Flickr where Creative Commons-licensed pictures are free.
- Create a site icon. I chose MS PowerPoint (although lots of people like GIMP, which I find more complicated) to create my icon. Because I am design illiterate, I also used Remove.bg to make my heart-shaped icon’s background transparent. I’m sure most people reading this can figure out better ways to create an icon.
- Employ my usual just-in-time learning techniques to put elements together on Beezer. Two videos that helped me were this from Beezer and another from a YouTuber.
- Visit the MMF Beezer account and start a new PWA (our account lets us build 15 PWAs). It was blissfully easy (mostly), and there were some built in helps that got me through minor speed bumps. I had the PWA live within 4-5 hours.
- I contacted the Beezer help desk. When I had difficulty switching the site over from LoveAfghans.Beezer.com to LoveAfghans.com, I learned how responsive the team at Beezer is while they guided me toward a problem solution.
- Kept making small changes over several weeks- something that’s easy to do, and Beezer instantly updates across the web/devices.
Four weeks after starting, here’s what I can share about creating a PWA with Beezer:
Positively:
- Beezer is somewhat inexpensive considering that we got a great introductory special, that deal ended, and current prices are now “just ok.” They helped me create a very nice looking and highly-performing website/app.
- Beezer’s interface was clearly made for app/website creation dummies like me. The program makes it remarkably easy to develop a PWA, but you still need some creative/design thinking of your own to make it attractive (hint: make a “header” for each page and put a pretty picture in there; not too hard)
- I think the apps Beezer helps you create can look great and perform well, plus having the performance features of a PWA is a huge bonus. You get both a website and app for the price of one.
- Beezer provides very good help desk services.
- There are easy-to-understand analytics built in to show how many people are using your PWA and their locations.
Negatively:
- I’m not sure how easy it is to create a PWA that has more than a homepage and one level of sub-pages linked to it. It may be doable, but it wasn’t obvious to me how to do it well (remember, I’m still a web/app development dummy).
- Potential deal breaker: Beezer PWAs don’t show up in Google searches and don’t allow for Google Search Engine Optimization (that said, LoveAfghans.com still appears at the top of Bing searches?!). If your strategy for distributing your site/app is having people organically find it via Google, Beezer may not be the right solution for you. I’m hoping that, since they are a new “shop,” this will change soon!
- The easiest way to tell how well a PWA functions is to run a Lighthouse test (giving the PWA a score from 0-100). My experience trying this for the LoveAfghans PWA was discovering that Beezer PWAs somehow break Lighthouse tests. You don’t get a report and, therefore, you have little idea how highly it’s functioning. This is another flaw I hope Beezer will also correct soon.
Do I recommend Beezer? Yes.
While its price is no longer minimal, their service makes it super easy for app/web development dummies like me to put together a PWA quickly. That makes it worth the cost, if you can afford it.