Novable

"Websites + marketing, generated by AI, for local businesses that can't afford an agency."

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Inspiration

We kept seeing the same problem with local businesses. A lot of them have good products and services, but their online presence is either missing or spread across WhatsApp, Instagram, Google, and other platforms.

Setting everything up properly can be expensive and time-consuming, especially for a small business owner who doesn't know how to code.

That got us thinking: what if a business owner could just tell an AI about their business and have it build the digital side for them?

That's where Novable started.

What it does

Novable helps local businesses build and manage their online presence using AI.

A business owner can provide basic information about their business, and Novable can turn it into a professional website without them having to start from a blank page.

We also wanted to go beyond just making websites. The idea is to eventually help with things like content, customer engagement, reviews, leads, and other day-to-day digital work that businesses usually have to handle themselves or pay an agency for.

How we built it

We built Novable as a full-stack web application and used Google Gemini for the AI side of the product.

The user first provides information about their business. We then process that information and use Gemini to generate the content and structure needed for the website.

A lot of the work went into connecting the AI output with the actual application. We used React, TypeScript, Next.js, Tailwind CSS, and Vercel to build and deploy the product.

We wanted the experience to feel simple from the user's side, even though there is quite a bit happening behind the scenes.

Challenges we ran into

The hardest part was getting AI-generated output to be consistent.

It's easy to get an LLM to generate a nice-looking piece of content. It's much harder to make sure that the output always fits the structure of an actual application.

We had to spend a lot of time thinking about prompts, data structures, validation, and how to handle cases where the AI doesn't return exactly what we expect.

We also had to figure out what Novable should actually be. At first, it was mainly an AI website builder. As we worked on it, we realized that the website is only one part of the problem we want to solve.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're proud that we were able to take the idea from a rough concept to a working product.

Instead of building another chatbot that gives business advice, we wanted Novable to actually do something for the user.

Seeing a few pieces of business information turn into an actual website was probably the most satisfying part of building it.

We also built the foundation in a way that allows us to keep adding more AI-powered business tools instead of treating the website as the final product.

What we learned

We learned that building with AI is less about just calling an API and more about everything around it.

Getting a model to produce something useful is one problem. Making that output reliable, usable, and connected to the rest of the application is a completely different problem.

We also learned that keeping the user experience simple is important. The user shouldn't have to understand how the AI works. They should just be able to say what they want and get a useful result.

What's next for Novable

For now, we're focusing on making Novable genuinely useful for local businesses and improving the features around their digital presence.

The bigger goal is to turn Novable into something much more than a website generator.

We want to build toward a system where a business owner can describe what they need in plain English and Novable can actually build and manage it for them.

The website is just the starting point.

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