I've started building a few side projects and experienced the same frustration. I'll use one of my recent projects as an example. Here's the first version of t

I've started building a few side projects and experienced the same frustration. I'll use one of my recent projects as an example. Here's the first version of the landing page : https://imgur.com/a/BDNgl https://imgur.com/a/BDNgl and here's the current landing page : https://www.hostedcomments.com/ https://www.hostedcomments.com/ Even though the current version could be improved significantly, I graduated from receiving comments such as "The current one doesn't motivate me to continue, even less to buy from you" to being somewhat acceptable. Here's what works for me : I used bootstrap but tweaked the colours of the default buttons, the colour of the navbar and footer and it made a world of difference. The default bootstrap colour scheme is pretty ordinary and the examples feel like they are literally designed to expose people like me, who just use the default bootstrap colour scheme and example code snippets and end up with a terrible design. As an example, the default navbar has rounded corners and a simple addition of the navbar-static-top class makes the navbar look significantly better. Regarding UX, keep things as straightforward as possible. Cut out all the bullshit and fluff to deliver a flow that's natural to new users. You will need to talk to users to figure out what works and what doesn't. It's also a good idea to have helpful tooltips in areas where users can potentially have trouble understanding the flow. In general use screenshots/gifs/videos liberally, especially on the landing page. They work pretty well.