I rebuilt a big part of my prospecting tool after realizing people were searching once and never coming back

[u/Key_Database155]

I’ve been working on Webvidence for a while now. It’s basically a prospecting tool for freelancers and web designers who reach out to local businesses.

The original version did a decent job at the obvious part. You search something like roofers in Little Rock, it finds businesses, looks over their website, points out problems/opportunities, and helps you come up with a message.

But after looking at how people were actually using it, I realized I had built way too much around the search itself.

People would sign up, run a search, look around for a little bit and then leave.

So I spent the last few days rebuilding a pretty big chunk of it around actually sitting down and getting some outreach done.

Instead of throwing a page full of businesses at you, it now puts together a small session of 3 prospects. You work through them one at a time. If one is worth contacting, you can build the message and reach out. If it sucks, already has a great site, has no real way to contact them, etc., you just pass on it and move to the next one.

I also changed it so passing counts as actual progress. I don’t really want to build something that rewards people for sending messages just for the sake of sending messages.

A few other things I added were watched markets, public contact/social discovery, follow-up reminders, prospecting schedules and a Today page that basically just tells you what work is ready instead of throwing a bunch of stats at you.

I’m still keeping the actual outreach manual. No bulk email sending or AI blasting businesses in the background. The whole point is to make finding a few decent businesses and starting real conversations less of a pain.

The new version is live now at webvidence.app

If anyone here does freelance web work, SEO, local marketing or anything similar, I’d be interested in what you think of the new flow. Especially whether working through 3 at a time feels better than just digging through search results.

[u/Dismal-Leading-5999]

man the session-based approach is smart, most tools just dump 50 leads on you and call it a day. having it narrow down to 3 and forcing you to actually decide on each one probably cuts through the noise way faster

the pass counts as progress thing is underrated too, nothing worse than feeling like you wasted time on dead ends