Earlier this summer we sent Nectarblocks customers a survey. We wanted to know how you build, what you want next, and what we’d better not break. Forty-one of you answered, and every single one of you filled in all ten open-text questions. Global Design Variables and Copy/Paste Block Styles ran away with the feature vote, 30 and 29 of 36 (83% and 81%). Third place was 39 points back. The biggest request turned out to be templates, and we hadn’t even put them on the list. And the thing you most often asked us not to break, roughly nine of you, is how fast and light Nectarblocks is.
There were two parts to it. Thirty-six of the 41 voted on a list of features we were already thinking about, up to seven picks each. Everyone answered the ten open-text questions. That open text is where the templates request came from. It’s also where the AI split came from, and the Salient features some of you miss, and every quote you’ll read below.
A word on how we’re reading it. Forty-one people is a small slice of everyone using Nectarblocks. The survey is one input, and it sits next to support tickets, what we watch people build, and where we already want to take the product.
If you took it, thank you. Here’s what you told us.
Which features won the roadmap vote?
Thirty-six of you voted on the list of features we were considering, up to seven picks each. Here’s the top of the ballot:
- Global Design Variables, 30 of 36 (83%)
- Copy/Paste Block Styles, 29 of 36 (81%)
- Post Carousel, 15 of 36 (42%)
- WooCommerce Block Set and Multi-Step Animations, 14 each (39%)
Nothing else came close. The open text backs it up, too. Five of you described global design variables before you’d even seen the option, and three of you asked for copy/paste styles without being prompted. And it didn’t matter who we asked. People building client sites, people building their own, or both. All of them picked the same two, at pretty much the same rate.
Both are on the newly refreshed public roadmap, and the vote moved them up our list.
Templates
Eleven of forty of you asked for more templates, and we never brought them up.
The survey showed a desire for smaller pieces to start from, section starters and wireframes, more than full showcase pages. You also want to be able to do things with templates. Duplicate a theme-builder template to make three related single-post layouts, say, or use synced patterns.
The template library keeps growing either way. What changes is where we point that effort. Section starters and wireframes come first, along with the template operations you described.
What about AI?
AI came up a fair amount in the feedback, and it split the room. Several in the first camp already hook Claude or Codex up to their Nectarblocks sites through an MCP connector with varying results. What they want is for our blocks to make sense to the tools they’re already using. The other camp doesn’t want generated design, full stop.
Nobody asked for a button that spits out a website. The first group want an agent they already use to understand our blocks and produce something that actually opens in the editor. The other group is afraid of generated design replacing their own. We think both are right. So we’re starting by building a translation layer, and it isn’t a design tool. Nectarblocks will teach the model what our blocks are and what they can do, validate everything it produces against the real block registry before it touches your site, and always hand the result back to you as a draft, so your site stays yours. It will work through your own Anthropic or OpenAI key or a Nectar-hosted option, and the same abilities will be there for Claude, Cursor, or Codex through MCP. It ships switched off, and if you never turn it on nothing changes. We’re deep in development on it now and will share more as it gets closer.
Everything else you told us
Half of you came over from Salient, and six of you named Salient features you miss. Portfolio filtering, background color transitions on scroll. Post Carousel’s 15 of 36 (42%) in the vote belongs in that pile too. If you moved over and one of those is the thing you keep reaching for, we get why it feels like a step backward. They’re on our list.
The thing you most often asked us not to break, roughly nine of you, is performance. Keep it fast, keep the plugin light. After that came the simple interface and staying Gutenberg-native.
How we will use this
A survey this size gives us direction, and that’s how we’re using it. Global Design Variables and Copy/Paste Block Styles move up. Our AI work stays on the interoperability side. Post Carousel, the WooCommerce Block Set and Multi-Step Animations each got 14 or 15 of 36. They’re still on the list, they just aren’t first. When everything else is equal, the vote tells us what order to take things in. The rest of the order still comes from support tickets, from what we see people doing in the editor, and from where we already think the product should go.
And roughly nine of you asked us, in your own words, to keep Nectarblocks fast and light. Whatever ships out of this can’t make the pages you’ve already built any heavier, and we completely agree.
One last thing. Every one of you who took this answered all ten open questions, and a lot of what you wrote was about sites you’d already shipped with Nectarblocks and what you wanted to build next. That’s a lot of care to put into a survey. Thank you for the passion you bring to Nectarblocks, and for helping us guide the path forward. Keep telling us what’s working and what isn’t.