You know those houses along Balkan roads? Ground floor rendered, curtains in the windows, washing out in the yard. And steel rebar sticking out of the roof. For another floor. For the son. For someday.
I always thought those people were a bit funny.
Then Stefan and I spent seven months building exactly that kind of house. Except we never moved into the ground floor.
How it started
In January, Stefan and I sat down at a table. Stefan has been running Google Ads for online shops since 2016. I build websites (including the one you are reading). For years we had watched the same thing: an owner pays for a website, pays for ads, pays an agency, and has no idea which of it works.
The idea was a good one. A platform that walks a small business owner through it step by step. Website first, then tracking, then ad accounts, then campaigns. As if Stefan and I were sitting next to you, just without us.
It was called GrowthPack Lab. Later we renamed it ePuškice (Serbian for “digital cheat sheets”). (The name was the only thing we finished quickly.)
What we built
Let me show you round the house. Grab a coffee, this takes a while.
Ground floor: two versions, one for online shops and one for service businesses. Inside them, 52 modules, 216 items and 884 steps. Separate instructions for WooCommerce and for Shopify. Plus 144 automatic checks to see whether you had actually done something or just ticked the box.
First floor: a quiz that scores you and sends you to your weakest spot. A connection to your Google Analytics account, so your numbers show up in the platform. A tool that checks for itself whether tracking on your site works. An SEO review scored from 0 to 100.
Second floor: daily streaks (like Duolingo), streak rewards, notes on every step, phone notifications, a weekly email report, reminders.
Loft: a community with posts, comments and likes. A suggestions board with voting. Support tickets. Pro forma invoices with a Serbian instant payment QR code. Three languages and three currencies. A partner programme with commissions and its own partner portal.
And the rebar on the roof: 40 tools so the whole platform could be run from a chat with AI. A kanban board for tasks. For Stefan and me.
All together, around 50,000 lines of code.
Now the bit that still stings a little.
The community had one post, from one customer: “Đes te ekipa.” (Serbian slang for “What’s up, team.”) One comment underneath. That was the whole community.
Three customers paid for the platform.
(Seven months, three customers. No need for a calculator, I have already done the maths.)
Why we never moved in
It would be easy to write that Stefan was to blame. Or me. Neither is true.
A few months in, I started looking at the calendar. Too much time had gone. I wanted to launch and see what happened. Better half finished with a customer than finished on our hard drive.
Stefan did not want to release something half finished. His name is on it. He does not launch a campaign until tracking works properly, and he looked at the platform the same way. So every time, there was one more floor that had to be done before anyone moved in.
Stefan and I were both right. And that was the problem.
Anyone who has had builders in knows how it goes. “Just this one thing, then you can move in.” Then one more thing. Then another. We did not fight. We just went round in circles, week after week. I push forward, Stefan sends it back for another pass, and each of us has a good reason.
The real culprit was the house itself. When you build floor after floor and nobody lives on the ground floor, nobody tells you that you do not need the next floor. Silence sounds like “it is not finished yet”.
The conversation in September
In mid September we sat down and talked. No platform on the screen.
The question was simple: out of all this, what do people actually need on day one?
It turned out that on day one people need an order. What to check first, what next, and where they stand. Everything else (streaks, rewards, community, three currencies) was our wish for a beautiful house.
We put that order into one Google Sheet.
Today it is the Sistematski pregled prodavnice (a “shop check-up”, in Serbian). You fill in the Status column, the sheet works out how healthy your shop is and shows you red and green. It takes an hour or two. It costs 3,990 dinars (about €34). There is also a version for service businesses: salons, repair shops and clinics.
We walked into January with plans for a three storey house. We walked out of September with the keys to a ground floor where someone actually lives.
And this is where Stefan was right
To be fair. The sheet does not look half finished precisely because Stefan said no to half finished. Every item went through his hands, like a campaign before launch. If you run an online shop and want to see how he handles Google Ads, his site is adswithsteph.com.
I was right about time. Stefan was right about quality. It took us seven months to realise both fit in one spreadsheet.
If you are building another floor too
I am not writing this as a confession. (All right, partly.) I am writing it because I see the same thing with people who come to us for a website. A 40 page spec, five languages, a blog, a shop, memberships. For a business that has not had its first customer from the internet yet.
Before you build the next floor, answer three questions. It takes five minutes.
- Would anyone pay for a version that fits on one sheet of paper? If not, they will not pay for the platform either. If yes, make the paper first.
- Which of this did a customer ask for, and which did you? Write two columns. In our case the second one was much longer.
- When did someone outside last see this and pay for it? If the answer is “it is not finished yet”, that is your ground floor with nobody living in it.
If you are planning a website, the same questions apply. I have written about what a company website really needs and about the signs a web design firm will actually deliver. And this is how we approach web design: what sells first, everything else after.
What is left of the house
We did not throw anything away. Those 884 steps are still there, like foundations in the ground. The sheet came out of them. The next check-up will come out of them too.
The rebar is still sticking out of the roof. Maybe one day there will be another floor.
But now someone lives in the house.
Jovan, NovaDizajn
P.S. We spent seven months building a platform with 884 steps and sold it three times. Then we sat down, pulled out the order people actually need and put it in one spreadsheet. If you run a shop in Serbia, the Sistematski pregled tells you where you stand in an hour.
P.P.S. Not sure even about the spreadsheet? ePuškice has a free 12 point checklist (in Serbian). Grab it and check the first 12 things today, before lunch.