

YC S13 Top beautiful websites - jenntoda
https://scoutzie.com/blog/top-10-beautiful-ycs13-startup-websites

======
reneherse
Most of these designs are pretty nice, however there are a couple of things
that should not be emulated. Just some quick, well-meant observations:

IMO, the two designs that stand out as the best are Le Tote and Apptimize,
both for their crisp, clear layouts and well-harmonized, non-cliched colors.
In both cases, the background imagery helps to communicate the story of the
product: The background on Apptimize connotes measurement, which is the
general purpose of the app. (One little nit with the Apptimize page is the
over-use of the slab-serif font in all caps as you get towards the bottom of
the page, especially the "News" section.)

On Le Tote, the background connotes a sense of sophistication and glamour. The
page copy, testimonials, and background all work together so that you
understand that this is a fashion startup oriented toward a certain type of
woman: chic, sophisticated, and aspirational. She'll know this site is for her
when she gets there.

Now onto things that would be better if different:

On Estimode, the background slider is so fast moving and distracting that it
makes it near impossible to read the above the fold page copy. It's gratuitous
design: the background change, though a clever idea, provides very little new
information, and only detracts from trying to understand the information that
is already there. And there is no way to pause the thing; I had to keep
clicking on one of the selector bubbles to keep the slider still long enough
to grok the copy.

Similarly, the background video of Hum seems gratuitous, for what meaning do
we get from just seeing a bunch of cheery folks using their smart phones?
There's not really a story being told there. The rest of the Hum page is quite
monotonous with its single column layout and repetitive typography. The text
is really getting into TL;DR territory.

On StatusPage.io, the page is informative, but the continuously moving right
to left moving text is difficult to read. The GG Bridge background image is,
unfortunately, a missed opportunity to convey meaning. Contrast that with the
main image on BloomThat which captures the sense of the founding locale but is
also informative of the story of the product.

Hope this isn't too negative; I write it here in the sense of identifying
things that could be improved. Best of luck to all these companies in their
post demo day fundraising!

------
Fuzzwah
[https://www.statuspage.io](https://www.statuspage.io) might be good looking
but it isn't responsive (on my desktop machine running chrome) and starts
cutting off content if the window is less than 1218px wide. Ridiculous.

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seeingfurther
These are all the same design.

~~~
jmtame
Blue Steel, Ferrari, Le Tigre? They're the same face!

Couldn't help, sorry. Downvote accordingly...

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swinnipeg
What makes these designs work? Do they?

I am no design expert, but these sites look like they could of been "top theme
downloads" on a WP Theme site.

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dchuk
What a fluffy post, why is this unordered list of 10 designs on the front page
at all?

~~~
Lifebot
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