(Most) all websites should look the same. Most browsers look the same. Most car dashes look the same. Most newspapers look the same. Most books look the same.
The web is not art. At least, not most of the time. Websites should only look markedly different with good reason. For most clients, there is not a good reason.
Not sure what cars you've been driving, but search for 'car dash' on google images and bask in the differences.
Saying that all websites should look the same might be reasonable when you're talking about one network or brand, but outside of that, creativity should be explored, encouraged and rewarded.
Who wants a world with every restaurant, bar, urban design or any design looking the same? Good design and UX has nothing to do with copying your neighbour's layout and changing a few colours. Just because that's frequently done, doesn't mean these cookie-cut sites deserve any praise other than "good copy 'n paste job mate".
I agree. It's achieving 'dominant design' and a sign of maturation. Once, there were many designs (many car startups too) for a car steering wheel. At some point, they converged on the idea of a round gizmo, because it balanced utility and design, form and function... And lucky for us, designers moved onto other things.
This makes a lot of sense. To address a comment or two: It doesn't seem like much of a stretch to imagine that 21echoes' proposal includes the concept that websites of a similar nature should resemble each other rather than that all websites should look alike.
That would be true if every website had the same job. They don't. Some are there to inform the user, some to persuade the user, some to gather information, some to work as a shopfront and others to work as a product in themselves. It would be a very odd design quirk if one design worked best for all those things.
Aaand... Looking at their landing page[1] I can see they've chosen to go with a horizontal page layout. Because they use a non standard page layout they have a black stripe bumping in and out of the viewport instructing the user that they can/should scroll. This is quite a common layout among artsy portfolio themes[2].
Has anyone ever tried to sidescroll a web page lately? On my Yosemite MBP with latest Firefox/Chromium I just get a jitter and no movement. Sometimes the scrollbar moves in the wrong the direction and then dies.
Moral: what is tried and tested usually works very well.
> On my Yosemite MBP with latest Firefox/Chromium I just get a jitter and no movement
So turns out you have to scroll up/down to get it to scroll left/right. That makes total sense. And the speed is way off so the first time I tried it it just flicked straight to the end...
Exactly! As I said in my other comment in this same thread, their website is quite bad, they use unintuitive and wrongly implemented UI, which produces horrible UX.
For me - scroll hijacking (or crazy unintuitive scrolling in general) is the worst 'feature' 'web designer' can implement. Gives me instant rage.
Ugh, obviously they hijack scrolling. Unusable on Safari. Though I think side scrolling is a really bad idea it would work just fine if the designer lets me use native scrolling.
> At times I think back to when websites were produced in Flash. For all its downfalls (and there were a lot) one thing was always true. Flash sites rarely looked the same.
The author clearly doesn't remember what it was actually like to arrive on a Flash site, and play the fun games of 'where has the designer hidden the navigation today?' and 'oh crap, how do I turn the sound off?'.
Design patterns are there to ensure that functionality works in a roughly consistent manner across different sites, so instead of having to spend ages figuring out an inscrutable interface, the user can easily buy a product or find the information they want and get on with their day.
This is not a trend. This is lots of people slowly figuring out how content should be structured for maximum usability in a web context. Layout conventions will develop over time, as new ideas are incorporated and technology changes, but that's a good thing.
As has been pointed out, books have looked roughly the same for the last few hundred years, but design innovation has only increased, as technology and our understanding of the conventions involved has improved.
The visual design area is more susceptible to trends - a few years ago everything was glossy, then with 'Flat UI' everything became dark blue and a sickly shade of green. But that's ok too. Except for the green, that was horrible.
The danger is with 'cargo cult' design. That's where the complaint against generic themes is valid – a style is used because it's popular without thinking about whether it's actually the best fit for the content and what's to be achieved.
Even when it was being done it was a stupid tech trick from jackass developers, it was never a designer driven thing except as a means of doing layouts that were you couldn't do in html at the time. and it was NEVER about usability.
I hated that trend and thank god it didn't last very long specifically BECAUSE it threw the users under the bus.
I could not disagree more. Don't fix what isn't broken (anymore). I believe that after years of designing websites, we found something that works, and works well. Consumers land on sites and see something familiar. It makes for a comfortable and easier web. I'm all for this "standard" in web design.
Just like we didn't need to fix the infinite-scrolling-homepage before it, or the top-navigation-with-drop-downs design before that , or the left-side-navigation-fixed-width design before that, or the fluid-width-with-header-and-two-sidebars before that. The current design trend is exactly that - a trend. Something else will replace it in a year or two.
The current state-of-the-art full screen background image site is no more a standard than any other design in any other field. Design is a living, breathing thing that evolves as our technology evolves - it moves with the times.
However...
I believe that after years of designing websites, we found something that works, and works well.
You don't need to 'believe'. If you aren't testing your designs and gathering actionable metrics you're really missing out.
Yep. This is like someone saying "all pop songs sound the same". Yup, they do, and because they're meant to be accessible.
The consumer doesn't always want to be challenged. See "Don't Make Me Think". A familiar design allows us to focus on the content, not the delivery.
There are exceptions, of course. Iron Maiden's website is dark and epic, as it should be. They're a metal band. But if I'm going to be buying software from you, c'mon. Make my life easier. Don't make me think.
It's just one example of fashion in tech. Around ten years ago there was another fashion for web sites - all the panels had rounded corners (and it wasn't supported by CSS, so people created the rounded corners from pieces of images - very unproductive waste of time).
Non-tech people, when ordering a web side, often just don't accept things which look different than other web sites they have seen. At that times it was difficult to convince people rounded panels with borders are not necessary. People often are unable to judge themselves, so they rely on what others do.
There are many other examples of such unhealthy fashion: Spring framework in Java, XML, SOAP, gray text on web pages (even despite it violates W3C accessibility recommendations), not using tables in markup (even if I want tabular layout), etc, etc
On the other hand I agree that uniformity can help people to consume information, and also inventing unique design is often a waste - the content is the most important part. Still, there are many cases of harmful fashion.
>gray text on web pages (even despite it violates W3C accessibility recommendations),
the W3C don't recommend against grey text at all, they recommend that designers consider the contrast of text colour versus background colour, and to not use light grey on white. It's a matter of contrast and not a blanket rule.
I do think it is important that we don't start making new silly rules about dos and don'ts in web-design.
For that matter, all books look the same too. And yet everyone knows how to use books. You hand someone a book and they never look at you funny asking how to get to Chapter 1.
His article is negative, but I for one have been able to traverse websites more quickly and easily because they adhere to some now-common conventions. Of course websites need to be original but not SO original that they require the user to adjust their assumptions about what to expect from site while it's loading.
Unless the book is a manga, in which case you will find chapter 1 at the back, and how many of us tried to read our first manga in the early 90s only to be really confused?
I mention it not be a pedantic fool, but because the web also has global regional variations and the linked blog post deals solely with the western web and its layout. There is a marked difference in design and quantity of information (and quality, both positive and negative) of the web we use and the web in other regions.
Honestly I'm fine with most websites sticking to a similar layout as it helps me navigate it faster plus it's just trendy right now so that'll pass like all web design trends before it.
Having said that this specific layout is garbage, in my opinion and not because of its design but because of the way it's used. It's so incredibly rare to see a company use this type of layout without filling in every single space with utter bullshit about generic buzzwords and it just takes up so much space. I can't count how many start-up websites I go to and I have to scroll down for pages just to figure out what they even sell because everything up front is large, generic images that don't mean anything followed by lots of very general phrases and buzzwords.
I think it's safe to say, at least from my view, that Bootstrap is the reason for it. Bootstrap made this format easy and clean, and it works well with mobile. Websites will look like this until someone comes out with the next thing that's easier and/or cleaner and/or works better in mobile and then a couple years later THAT will be the format you're seeing everywhere. I don't think this is a bad thing. At least it's clean and works well on mobile...
Bootstrap didn't invent such websdesign, it was experimented with, learned and improved collectively. If anything, the library implemented these (almost) standards that were wildly used.
I take issue with the current 'standard' design, but only indirectly. I feel like giant home screens give companies the freedom to create a great looking webpage without any actual content - like a giant landing page. Since they all look the same, it's easy to compare and contrast.
I can recall a number of times scrolling through the entire home page for a company, only to still be confused about what the product actually does. I see a huge banner image, coordinating colors, tons of whitespace, very high-level text content...but little that says, "Our product will specifically do this, that, and the next for you!". I have to click around to find that out. By that time, I'm quite annoyed, and I'm not sure if your product is worth my effort.
Maybe my expectations of a home page are wrong though.
"I can recall a number of times scrolling through the entire home page for a company, only to still be confused about what the product actually does."
This seems to be a major problem lately with startups, especially ones promoted on YC. The home page is often one big image with a little vague text and a "sign up" button. Half the time you can't even tell if it's a shipping product, or much about what it does.
There are people who will click on anything, so this strategy looks, at first, like it's working. ("We have a zillion users and signups! We're ready for another financing round!") As the clickbait advertising industry has discovered, the click on everything crowd does not buy much. Most clicks come from about 10% of users, and they're not the users with money.
When it comes to 'landing pages' (where describing the purpose of a company or product is the goal), I think the problem is primarily that it's just really hard to do right, content-wise. The visual design is at most a secondary problem.
A more general-purpose home page has it's challenges, of course, but often it's really just about showing something pretty and guiding users to pages such as 'pricing', 'buy/shop', 'contact', 'about us', etc.
A landing page, on the other hand, is basically the same as creating an ad or a commercial. You have a limited time to 'sell' something, and the fact that you need a page for it means that it's not immediately obvious what you're selling. You have to write ad copy, consider the visuals, target audience, selling points, etc. This is much more difficult than just having a few pages that do very specific things, and a home page that points to them.
Finding out what they do is a fairly unusual need though, right? When I look up a company website (rarely) I'm not looking to find out what they do, typically. My use cases are something like: I want to order something, I want info on a specific product they sell, I want support for something that has gone wrong, or rarely I may be looking for info on working there. I typically know what they do before going to their site, otherwise I wouldn't be there in the first place.
If mentioned style works is simple, and represents/introduces product/service well, then why not. What annoys me is when designers/developers over do it, e.g. scroll hijacking, lots of heavy JS which introduces horrible lag, and unnecessary pop which ruins user experience.
Sorry, but `novolume.co.uk` is stepping into the the category of over doing it.
Huge, and super low contrast arrow buttons to switch articles. Why?
Italic serif slim and narrow font, from which my head hurts, eyes are twitching and is not readable (and some characters are unrecognisable, e.g. '&'). AFAIK, serif font is more readable then sans-serif, but this is not the case.
Custom scroll bar, why the hell do you need to replicate a perfect native widget my browser has (and this seems to be a new trend, probably replacing scroll hijacking)?
Crazy tilted, on hover shape and colour changing (and low-res) social buttons, why make it so complicated?
At least `novolume.co.uk` loads and renders fast, is responsive and does not have lagging UI.
>At times I think back to when websites were produced in Flash. For all its downfalls (and there were a lot) one thing was always true. Flash sites rarely looked the same.
This is the take away line. There's a reason why we now have beautiful looking websites to a fairly uniform standard and that after the 2000s, the usage of Flash on Web sites declined.
The fact that "all websites look the same" should be celebrated in as much that we've found a formula that is practical for consuming content and for the most part, works.
He's right that most bootstrapped startup websites look the same, because they don't have designers on their team, their founders aren't trained in design, and they don't have the money or time to really flesh out the design. They just follow easy examples that are passable or in vogue. Or worse, maybe they just buy a template.
But OP is wrong once you talk about startups that get money. I mean for some well known ones, just look at Stripe, Mattermark, Branient, Mixpanel, Filepicker, Buildzoom... these sites aren't the same at all. If you spend time studying the design of hundreds of YC startups you'll see what I mean... almost to the point where I wonder if YC specifically instructs their startups not to copy other YC startups.
After reading the comments the debate seems to be creativity vs utility. There has to be a balance between the two. Acknowledge what works best now and then adjust when something better comes along.
With that said, specifically in websites, I think utility should come as a first priority. If your doing a band or artist website I can see bumping up the creativity factor though.
We've arrived with this design from years of design evolution and no one person is responsible. All products seem to ultimately converge on some optimal universal archetype. Websites, books and radio towers are no different in this sense. The same will be true of mobile Apps someday but I don't think its the case at the moment.
So in summary, most websites have settled on a design with:
- Headline / key attention-grab in the most visible size possible
- Subhead / attention -> interest converter right below that
- Attractive visual element providing emotional context occupying as much screenspace as possible
- Benefits propositions right below those, exactly where you'd expect them to be if you're familiar with a Web browser
Sounds like a damn good approach to me. I mean, I'd be happy to see an even more efficient design that measurably increased conversion rates for most products, but if there's nothing currently out there, I'm OK with the state of the art :)
All websites should look the same, but they don't. Sadly.
It's all just information in some kind of format. A video as an mp4 or some text as... well text in whatever way your machine stores it, but mixed with a bunch of irrelevant other text.
But then there is "design" and then you get stuff like inconsistent search, inconsistent site layout, you never know where to look, what to look for, you miss things because they are placed somewhere where you are not used to look. It's a mess.
All startup websites look the same. They all use this template because it perfectly addresses their goals (grab your attention, explain a new kind of product, convince you to sign up) while also being familiar and repeatable. That doesn't concern or surprise me.
Other kinds of web page with a standard design style include: shopfronts, forums and Q&A sites, search engine result pages, shopping carts, calendar apps, video sharing sites.
Trying to look irregular just for the sake of it is bad.
>Trying to look irregular just for the sake of it is bad.
Looking irregular because your designer can ... actually design is good.
Looking irregular because there's a better way to present your site to the public is good.
It so happened I was given 5 different pens over a course of a week. Each pen had a different interface twist, pull, slide, press, not one was of the traditional variety of clicking the top. The following week I had to go to the bank to sign something. The banker handed me a pen, I pulled, twisted, pushed, and could not figure it out then I realized it was of the tradituinal variety, and sheepishly clicked the top.
[+] [-] 21echoes|10 years ago|reply
The web is not art. At least, not most of the time. Websites should only look markedly different with good reason. For most clients, there is not a good reason.
[+] [-] exodust|10 years ago|reply
Not sure what cars you've been driving, but search for 'car dash' on google images and bask in the differences.
Saying that all websites should look the same might be reasonable when you're talking about one network or brand, but outside of that, creativity should be explored, encouraged and rewarded.
Who wants a world with every restaurant, bar, urban design or any design looking the same? Good design and UX has nothing to do with copying your neighbour's layout and changing a few colours. Just because that's frequently done, doesn't mean these cookie-cut sites deserve any praise other than "good copy 'n paste job mate".
[+] [-] amelius|10 years ago|reply
Yes, modulo marketing concerns. Which obviously is something not regarded very highly on this forum :)
[+] [-] Spivak|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] phodo|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] foundart|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] onion2k|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unicornporn|10 years ago|reply
Has anyone ever tried to sidescroll a web page lately? On my Yosemite MBP with latest Firefox/Chromium I just get a jitter and no movement. Sometimes the scrollbar moves in the wrong the direction and then dies.
Moral: what is tried and tested usually works very well.
[1] http://www.novolume.co.uk/
[2] http://demo.koken.me/#boulevard
[+] [-] kalleboo|10 years ago|reply
So turns out you have to scroll up/down to get it to scroll left/right. That makes total sense. And the speed is way off so the first time I tried it it just flicked straight to the end...
[+] [-] trymas|10 years ago|reply
For me - scroll hijacking (or crazy unintuitive scrolling in general) is the worst 'feature' 'web designer' can implement. Gives me instant rage.
[+] [-] Udo_Schmitz|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mattkevan|10 years ago|reply
The author clearly doesn't remember what it was actually like to arrive on a Flash site, and play the fun games of 'where has the designer hidden the navigation today?' and 'oh crap, how do I turn the sound off?'.
Design patterns are there to ensure that functionality works in a roughly consistent manner across different sites, so instead of having to spend ages figuring out an inscrutable interface, the user can easily buy a product or find the information they want and get on with their day.
This is not a trend. This is lots of people slowly figuring out how content should be structured for maximum usability in a web context. Layout conventions will develop over time, as new ideas are incorporated and technology changes, but that's a good thing.
As has been pointed out, books have looked roughly the same for the last few hundred years, but design innovation has only increased, as technology and our understanding of the conventions involved has improved.
The visual design area is more susceptible to trends - a few years ago everything was glossy, then with 'Flat UI' everything became dark blue and a sickly shade of green. But that's ok too. Except for the green, that was horrible.
The danger is with 'cargo cult' design. That's where the complaint against generic themes is valid – a style is used because it's popular without thinking about whether it's actually the best fit for the content and what's to be achieved.
[+] [-] mreiland|10 years ago|reply
HATED.
With a passion.
Even when it was being done it was a stupid tech trick from jackass developers, it was never a designer driven thing except as a means of doing layouts that were you couldn't do in html at the time. and it was NEVER about usability.
I hated that trend and thank god it didn't last very long specifically BECAUSE it threw the users under the bus.
[+] [-] dpcan|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] onion2k|10 years ago|reply
The current state-of-the-art full screen background image site is no more a standard than any other design in any other field. Design is a living, breathing thing that evolves as our technology evolves - it moves with the times.
However...
I believe that after years of designing websites, we found something that works, and works well.
You don't need to 'believe'. If you aren't testing your designs and gathering actionable metrics you're really missing out.
[+] [-] visakanv|10 years ago|reply
The consumer doesn't always want to be challenged. See "Don't Make Me Think". A familiar design allows us to focus on the content, not the delivery.
There are exceptions, of course. Iron Maiden's website is dark and epic, as it should be. They're a metal band. But if I'm going to be buying software from you, c'mon. Make my life easier. Don't make me think.
[+] [-] avodonosov|10 years ago|reply
Non-tech people, when ordering a web side, often just don't accept things which look different than other web sites they have seen. At that times it was difficult to convince people rounded panels with borders are not necessary. People often are unable to judge themselves, so they rely on what others do.
There are many other examples of such unhealthy fashion: Spring framework in Java, XML, SOAP, gray text on web pages (even despite it violates W3C accessibility recommendations), not using tables in markup (even if I want tabular layout), etc, etc
On the other hand I agree that uniformity can help people to consume information, and also inventing unique design is often a waste - the content is the most important part. Still, there are many cases of harmful fashion.
[+] [-] kagamine|10 years ago|reply
>gray text on web pages (even despite it violates W3C accessibility recommendations),
the W3C don't recommend against grey text at all, they recommend that designers consider the contrast of text colour versus background colour, and to not use light grey on white. It's a matter of contrast and not a blanket rule.
I do think it is important that we don't start making new silly rules about dos and don'ts in web-design.
[+] [-] mholt|10 years ago|reply
His article is negative, but I for one have been able to traverse websites more quickly and easily because they adhere to some now-common conventions. Of course websites need to be original but not SO original that they require the user to adjust their assumptions about what to expect from site while it's loading.
[+] [-] kagamine|10 years ago|reply
I mention it not be a pedantic fool, but because the web also has global regional variations and the linked blog post deals solely with the western web and its layout. There is a marked difference in design and quantity of information (and quality, both positive and negative) of the web we use and the web in other regions.
[+] [-] BinaryIdiot|10 years ago|reply
Having said that this specific layout is garbage, in my opinion and not because of its design but because of the way it's used. It's so incredibly rare to see a company use this type of layout without filling in every single space with utter bullshit about generic buzzwords and it just takes up so much space. I can't count how many start-up websites I go to and I have to scroll down for pages just to figure out what they even sell because everything up front is large, generic images that don't mean anything followed by lots of very general phrases and buzzwords.
[+] [-] Phlow|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] flockonus|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JustSomeNobody|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pun_Krawk|10 years ago|reply
I can recall a number of times scrolling through the entire home page for a company, only to still be confused about what the product actually does. I see a huge banner image, coordinating colors, tons of whitespace, very high-level text content...but little that says, "Our product will specifically do this, that, and the next for you!". I have to click around to find that out. By that time, I'm quite annoyed, and I'm not sure if your product is worth my effort.
Maybe my expectations of a home page are wrong though.
[+] [-] Animats|10 years ago|reply
This seems to be a major problem lately with startups, especially ones promoted on YC. The home page is often one big image with a little vague text and a "sign up" button. Half the time you can't even tell if it's a shipping product, or much about what it does.
There are people who will click on anything, so this strategy looks, at first, like it's working. ("We have a zillion users and signups! We're ready for another financing round!") As the clickbait advertising industry has discovered, the click on everything crowd does not buy much. Most clicks come from about 10% of users, and they're not the users with money.
[+] [-] analog31|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mercer|10 years ago|reply
A more general-purpose home page has it's challenges, of course, but often it's really just about showing something pretty and guiding users to pages such as 'pricing', 'buy/shop', 'contact', 'about us', etc.
A landing page, on the other hand, is basically the same as creating an ad or a commercial. You have a limited time to 'sell' something, and the fact that you need a page for it means that it's not immediately obvious what you're selling. You have to write ad copy, consider the visuals, target audience, selling points, etc. This is much more difficult than just having a few pages that do very specific things, and a home page that points to them.
[+] [-] jib|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] trymas|10 years ago|reply
Sorry, but `novolume.co.uk` is stepping into the the category of over doing it.
Huge, and super low contrast arrow buttons to switch articles. Why?
Italic serif slim and narrow font, from which my head hurts, eyes are twitching and is not readable (and some characters are unrecognisable, e.g. '&'). AFAIK, serif font is more readable then sans-serif, but this is not the case.
Custom scroll bar, why the hell do you need to replicate a perfect native widget my browser has (and this seems to be a new trend, probably replacing scroll hijacking)?
Crazy tilted, on hover shape and colour changing (and low-res) social buttons, why make it so complicated?
At least `novolume.co.uk` loads and renders fast, is responsive and does not have lagging UI.
[+] [-] sdoering|10 years ago|reply
http://www.novolume.co.uk/blog/stolen-success/
[+] [-] jpswade|10 years ago|reply
This is the take away line. There's a reason why we now have beautiful looking websites to a fairly uniform standard and that after the 2000s, the usage of Flash on Web sites declined.
The fact that "all websites look the same" should be celebrated in as much that we've found a formula that is practical for consuming content and for the most part, works.
[+] [-] orthoganol|10 years ago|reply
But OP is wrong once you talk about startups that get money. I mean for some well known ones, just look at Stripe, Mattermark, Branient, Mixpanel, Filepicker, Buildzoom... these sites aren't the same at all. If you spend time studying the design of hundreds of YC startups you'll see what I mean... almost to the point where I wonder if YC specifically instructs their startups not to copy other YC startups.
[+] [-] erik14th|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] websitescenes|10 years ago|reply
With that said, specifically in websites, I think utility should come as a first priority. If your doing a band or artist website I can see bumping up the creativity factor though.
[+] [-] s_dev|10 years ago|reply
We've arrived with this design from years of design evolution and no one person is responsible. All products seem to ultimately converge on some optimal universal archetype. Websites, books and radio towers are no different in this sense. The same will be true of mobile Apps someday but I don't think its the case at the moment.
https://blog.intercom.io/things-cant-wireframed/
[+] [-] fsloth|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thenomad|10 years ago|reply
- Headline / key attention-grab in the most visible size possible
- Subhead / attention -> interest converter right below that
- Attractive visual element providing emotional context occupying as much screenspace as possible
- Benefits propositions right below those, exactly where you'd expect them to be if you're familiar with a Web browser
Sounds like a damn good approach to me. I mean, I'd be happy to see an even more efficient design that measurably increased conversion rates for most products, but if there's nothing currently out there, I'm OK with the state of the art :)
[+] [-] totemizer|10 years ago|reply
But then there is "design" and then you get stuff like inconsistent search, inconsistent site layout, you never know where to look, what to look for, you miss things because they are placed somewhere where you are not used to look. It's a mess.
All websites should look the same.
[+] [-] callum85|10 years ago|reply
Other kinds of web page with a standard design style include: shopfronts, forums and Q&A sites, search engine result pages, shopping carts, calendar apps, video sharing sites.
Trying to look irregular just for the sake of it is bad.
[+] [-] JustSomeNobody|10 years ago|reply
Looking irregular because your designer can ... actually design is good. Looking irregular because there's a better way to present your site to the public is good.
[+] [-] dfragnito|10 years ago|reply