

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

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?
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samratjp
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.

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kls
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...](http://replay.waybackmachine.org/19980509035420/http://www.apple.com/)

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.

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

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mburney
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
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.

