Well, hello! It’s been a while since I wrote, but it’s about time I get back into it.
I wanted to share my thoughts about our new product here at Ekreative, called Templify – why we built it, what it is about and why after over 18 months of working towards this release, this is only the beginning for Templify.
From our early days we always experimented with different product ideas of our own, so our team built numerous products for ourselves, in parallel to the ongoing service work for our clients. Some of our ideas worked, some didn’t turn out that well. Some turned into charitable projects that we continue to support as they have their user base and bring value. One example is MapaMagic – which is a local transportation app that improves in-city mobility. Some ideas turned into businesses and are doing quite well. Kidslox is one of them. Although, where it is now, being one of the world’s leading apps for parental controls, didn’t come easily and until year 7 we couldn’t really say if it is going to survive, let alone whether it is doing well or not. Some of our products are early in the journey, but are on the right path and we’re seeing great results so far.
Now Templify – what is it and more importantly – why we built a video editing app?
OK, let’s start with why. As a product development company, apart from the service business, we build our own products, where we can pioneer, experiment and explore with lots of technical and creative freedom. When we are not as tightly bound by clients’ deadlines, product growth perspective and technology preferences – we can boldly try new tech, give space for trial and error, and experience the joy of research and development, without knowing sometimes where it might lead to. So we are always considering new opportunities and ideas, and we regularly come across them.
One of the ideas initiated by our Head of Creative Strategy led to such a tech experiment, which resulted in a successful proof of concept during the summer of 2020. She, having a background with photo and video production in show business, combined with years of experience making engaging content for social media, wondered – can the process of making a professional video for TikTok, Instagram or Facebook – be faster? At the time, a 10 to 30 second video she would produce after a photo/video shoot would take hours to make and 3-4 different apps would need to be engaged in the process. That’s when the idea for Templify was born.
What is Templify?
Templify is a template-based video editing app. In an easy 3-step process it auto-generates a professional video that you can post on any social media with royalty-free music. Once you export a couple of videos, you pretty quickly learn how in under 1 minute you can have a professionally edited video with no video editing skills.
It’s for people who are, want or need to be active on social media, but don’t have the time to edit their content. Or you might not know how to show your content in a way that looks appealing to others. Or you might simply want to add variety to your content and show it in a creative way. Templify does editing for you, so that you can focus on your life and what you do best.
Here are a couple of use cases:
1) Personal use.
Say you had a family event, returned from a trip or went to a concert and you want to share your moments with friends. Use Templify to select photos & videos of your occasion, pick accompanying music and, well – done. Share your memories on social media, similarly how I did after our family Christmas party – https://www.instagram.com/tv/CX9XxB0IOW5/
2) Small business owner.
Say you have a bakery, a beauty salon, or a Shopify website where you sell organic snacks. Your audience needs to see you are actively present on social media on a daily basis, and your content is engaging. Presenting your products or services in a creative way with Templify will boost engagement and make a lasting impression. With our app you also quickly get your videos ready for social media without having to wait for hours to have edited content. You can also use it to create ads and run them on TikTok, Facebook or Instagram.
3) Creative person.
There’s a lot of professions in which you would want to share backstage of how something is done or footage of your work in progress – basically a “summary” of a particular activity. With Templify you quickly pick a template, add your footage, and boom – an edited video is ready to go on your social media.
How it works & benefits you
I guess by now, you more or less have an understanding of how it works. In essence, you open the app, choose the template you like, pick your media assets and export the video. The whole point of the app is that it does auto-montage for you, so that you have an edited video super fast – basically in seconds. However, if you want to make edits to the video – you can customize it: add filters, trim parts of the videos to highlight specific moments, choose music, etc.)
Because it is so simple and fast to use, it saves you hours of time on video editing. Uniqueness of the templates helps you stand out and creates variety in your social media presence. Ever growing library of templates with royalty-free music enables you to continually experiment and share your life’s moments in unique ways. Well, if you still haven’t – download Templify and try it for free.
Here’s what’s next
Today is exactly 1 month since the app launched and we’re pretty stoked about initial results with number of downloads and customer reviews and feedback. The plan is to release 4-5 new templates every month and closely work with our early user base to better understand the needs and get as much critical feedback as possible. We have a big roadmap ahead of us, where we will experiment with new features to empower more people to become creators, add variety and uniqueness, create more automation and simplicity so that the videos turn out better and content making becomes faster. The next 12 months are going to be also not only about product improvement, but, of course – marketing. That’s where a lot of effort is going to be in, as we try to reach as many people as possible to check out Templify.
I would love to hear your feedback and thoughts on it as well – so feel free to comment and reach out. Thanks!