Ask HN: what do the startups use for their websites?

2 points by cseric 15y ago ↗ HN

A lot of the startups these days have the exact same layout of their websites, with designs similar to this: http://www.rentmonitor.com/ Do they use anything common for putting up the website? or did they just all find it an effective design and built them the same way?

5 comments

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mburney 15y ago ↗

I'm very curious about this too. Is there a product out there that could generate a simple product site that uses one of the standard templates?

samratjp 15y ago ↗

Though I would advice anyone to get a designer if possible to make a good presentation, if you must, checkout http://www.noupe.com for random templates and designs and http://www.weebly.com for a simple drag and drop editor.

samratjp 15y ago ↗

I'd like to see more datapoints for why you feel this way. And besides, one reason for a "layout" decision to keep prominent action buttons front and visible could be after successful A/B testing (see this for an example - http://www.abtests.com/)

I don't think any YC startup would want to piss off PG with a template found somewhere online - most YC startups do have a clear landing page with call to action items and hardly . Likewise, I am sure that was the reasoning behind this TechStars website you've shared. Of course, I would assume that since they've only crossed the demo day chasm, they probably might've borrowed some elements from online for lack of a full-time designer perhaps.

matthewphiong 15y ago ↗

This type of layout is the landing page for the startup (product). It's similar across many startups because it works.

kls 15y ago ↗

if I remember correctly, Apple did a massive human factors study along with several studies on product placement on the web. they then came up with the following:

http://replay.waybackmachine.org/19980509035420/http://www.a...

You will quickly notice a resemblance. It was proven unequivocally that the right hand large photo product placement with a bar of sub items below draws the most conversions. It has been replicated since then to where it has almost become an unspoken standard.

If I recall correctly, Apple spent a massive amount on researching this and pretty much eliminated any other conceivable layout as drawing a higher conversion rate for product sales + recollection branding; that was the big key, not only did it drive higher sales, but it also served as identity branding as well.

So you will see a lot of companies, that do their research, implementing this style page, if they are a product company. You will also see a lot of off the shelf templates that emulate it. There are countless Wordpress and Drupal themes that offer this layout.

A lot of this info is from memory from the 90's, so take it with a grain of salt. The high level info is sound, but I may have got some of the details backwards.