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This is great! Thank you for sharing. But... is anyone else growing tired of the sales-pitch we're all using? And do any of us find it valuable for ourselves

This is great! Thank you for sharing. But... is anyone else growing tired of the sales-pitch we're all using? And do any of us find it valuable for ourselves when we read them? We've trained ourselves (collectively, as an industry) to expect a specific type of one-page: hero image, call-out-message with CTA, then abstract illustrations combined with text about how great something is. I don't know what I want in it's place (let's be honest, I'm clearly no marketing expert!), but what we've landed on has an incredibly bad signal:noise ratio.

nerdponx 5y ago
Personally I take it as a good sign if an application has an "ugly" information-dense website.
4ec0755f5522 5y ago
I hate it without realizing how much I hate it, and now that you've pointed it out in such simple, concrete terms I'm not going to be able to stop seeing it everywhere.
blurker 5y ago
For me, sort of yes but also no. It's kind've a wash actually. As you pointed out, this type of design is so common it doesn't really make the site bad or good, just "normal." On the other hand, poorly done designs set off red flags. So if you aren't capable of producing something original, it's probably best to go with this. So I'd say it's a safe way to make an acceptable site. But I definitely prefer a site that is well-designed and not this generic stuff that is the trend. I agree, it's a bad signal:noise ratio and it also gives me a bit of an icky corporate vibe. /shrug
indigochill 5y ago
> is anyone else growing tired of the sales-pitch we're all using? Not growing, been there for years. Another common annoyance is when they have a pricing page that ultimately asks you to schedule a phone call with their salespeople (not applicable here, but a common sales pattern for these sorts of things). > I don't know what I want in it's place The core of the problem IMO is that so much of these sorts of pages are filled with fluff that doesn't communicate very well about the product (or maybe it does, but not at a level that I will ever engage with, like case studies). One solution in some cases is to put a video demo of the product front and center. Look at https://about.gitlab.com/ https://about.gitlab.com/ for example. To some extent it's following the same pattern, but when you load the page the first thing you see is a pair of buttons. Get a free trial or watch a video demo. I'm annoyed they make it so hard to find their FOSS Community Edition (IMO that's a far better "free trial" than the one you have to sign up for), but just judging the landing page, the first thing you see is a CTA to get more information. The OP's page's first visual doesn't have that. You actually can't even find an actionable link until you've scrolled all the way to the bottom (if we ignore the top bar). Another annoyance of mine is the marketing cheapening of words like "awesome" and "amazing", which is in full force in OP. In marketing copy (and in common vernacular among some people) they're just white noise. It's a fun exercise to rewrite marketing copy with all the adjectives removed. Marketing criticism aside, though, I like the interactive element on OP. It's unnecessary, but cute.
marginalia_nu 5y ago
I think we're going to see the pendulum swing in the other direction relatively soon with this type of aesthetic, mainly because it's so transparently inauthentic and sterile. It's almost turned into a parody of itself.
deleted 5y ago
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nerdponx 5y ago

Personally I take it as a good sign if an application has an "ugly" information-dense website.

4ec0755f5522 5y ago

I hate it without realizing how much I hate it, and now that you've pointed it out in such simple, concrete terms I'm not going to be able to stop seeing it everywhere.

blurker 5y ago

For me, sort of yes but also no. It's kind've a wash actually. As you pointed out, this type of design is so common it doesn't really make the site bad or good, just "normal." On the other hand, poorly done designs set off red flags. So if you aren't capable of producing something original, it's probably best to go with this. So I'd say it's a safe way to make an acceptable site. But I definitely prefer a site that is well-designed and not this generic stuff that is the trend. I agree, it's a bad signal:noise ratio and it also gives me a bit of an icky corporate vibe. /shrug

indigochill 5y ago

> is anyone else growing tired of the sales-pitch we're all using? Not growing, been there for years. Another common annoyance is when they have a pricing page that ultimately asks you to schedule a phone call with their salespeople (not applicable here, but a common sales pattern for these sorts of things). > I don't know what I want in it's place The core of the problem IMO is that so much of these sorts of pages are filled with fluff that doesn't communicate very well about the product (or maybe it does, but not at a level that I will ever engage with, like case studies). One solution in some cases is to put a video demo of the product front and center. Look at https://about.gitlab.com/ https://about.gitlab.com/ for example. To some extent it's following the same pattern, but when you load the page the first thing you see is a pair of buttons. Get a free trial or watch a video demo. I'm annoyed they make it so hard to find their FOSS Community Edition (IMO that's a far better "free trial" than the one you have to sign up for), but just judging the landing page, the first thing you see is a CTA to get more information. The OP's page's first visual doesn't have that. You actually can't even find an actionable link until you've scrolled all the way to the bottom (if we ignore the top bar). Another annoyance of mine is the marketing cheapening of words like "awesome" and "amazing", which is in full force in OP. In marketing copy (and in common vernacular among some people) they're just white noise. It's a fun exercise to rewrite marketing copy with all the adjectives removed. Marketing criticism aside, though, I like the interactive element on OP. It's unnecessary, but cute.

marginalia_nu 5y ago

I think we're going to see the pendulum swing in the other direction relatively soon with this type of aesthetic, mainly because it's so transparently inauthentic and sterile. It's almost turned into a parody of itself.

deleted 5y ago

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