
YC Facelift: EXEC - reason
http://kyrobeshay.com/post/20746111679/yc-facelift-exec
======
ForrestN
I'm surprised by a lot of the response to this post for a couple of reasons.

First, and very simply, the existing Exec design is conspicuously weak and
unprofessional. It looks copy+pasted from a million other sites, but without
anyone with a good eye to look it over and pull the disparate copied elements
together. For all the negative feedback, there should be more acknowledgment
that Kyro's decision does a far better job aesthetically and in terms of
polish than what exists now.

Second, when did marketing and design become conflated? Most of the criticism
is about the approach the designer has taken to writing marketing copy and
otherwise persuading people to sign up. Is that really the role of a designer?
Maybe it is these days, but I think that means the role has now become a
hybrid of two pretty unrelated disciplines.

A great designer takes a sense of experience and branding and _translates_ it
into abstraction: color, form, rhythm, etc. Kyro has done a good job of this.
The design, text aside, reads as high-end, serious, appealing to
professionals, and most importantly like a solid company that is trustworthy
and can deliver on its promises.

A great copywriter or marketer is doing a totally different thing, trying to
persuade people and get them to convert. From knowing some people who are
pretty good at both things, I'm not convinced that these two roles should be
turned into one. I think this is a vast improvement on _design_ before I even
analyze whether or not its a _marketing copy_ improvement.

~~~
tptacek
I totally do not concede the point that IAMEXEC.COM looks conspicuously weak
and unprofessional. Exec's site looks better than Angie's List, for instance,
which looks like a 2008 Themeforest template but still manages to engage
normal people just fine.

The bar for web design excellence on HN is _way_ out of whack for what the bar
actually is in the real world.

This matters because I think lots of people talk themselves out of launching
out of concern that some web design enthusiast is going to come out of the
woodwork and accuse them of being "conspicuously unprofessional". Trust me:
people have driven a shitload of business through sites that I'm sure would
make you throw up in your mouth.

~~~
ForrestN
The fact that there exist weak and unprofessional sites representing
successful companies is not a counterargument against my evaluation of Exec's
design. I never claimed that Exec was doomed to fail, or even that they
imperatively need a redesign. I didn't make any kind of point about how much
impact visual design has on a business's success.

My point was about the relationship between two designs: the original Exec
design and the "facelift." The facelift is much more professional, and looks
much less thrown-together. To add some context, too, I'm not "coming out of
the woodwork" to criticize the company. I was responding to what seemed like a
lot of misplaced negativity about the facelift.

I think it's definitely possible for a company to do very well without a well-
designed website. But that's not really what we're talking about, is it?

~~~
tptacek
If you had said their design was "weak", I wouldn't have a strong argument.
You said their design was "unprofessional". Strong disagree, and disagreement
worth having: people here are too hung up on unreasonable standards of
"professionalism". "Professional" is a best practices standard. It very much
depends on context. Angie's List is a giant site in Exec's space. Exec's
launch website is to my eyes totally professional, cleaner and better written
than Angie's List.

What, exactly, do you think is _more_ professional about the redesign?

~~~
ForrestN
"Professional" in the context of visual design is about the aesthetics of
business (as opposed to the aesthetics of, say, amateurs). I didn't mean
professional in the sense of "money-earning," as you would use the term
applied to participants in a certain field.

Exec's launch website is unprofessional because it is unpolished, visually
unresolved, and appears to have taken little time to create. I don't want to
break down into a detailed argument over specifics, but the biggest problems
have to do with spacing, type size, the crappy icons, and the hyper-generic
elements like the buttons, background tiles and color palette. Also, the logo
(which isn't very distinctive in and of itself) isn't even used throughout.

The redesign is very carefully proportioned and arranged. It uses somewhat
less generic colors and buttons and so forth, and some simple visual ideas are
repeated throughout to create a sense of continuity and harmony. Each section
flows well from on area to the next.

Again, I think you might be projecting a little bit. Who's "hung up" on
"unreasonable standards" of professionalism? The post is about a person
redesigning Exec's landing page. The redesign is more professional, looks more
polished and refined and careful, than the original. I don't think that's a
huge deal, and I don't think that makes Exec a huge failure or something. I'm
not insisting that they raise their design to any standard.

EDIT: FYI, I'm not really much of a web designer myself. Kyro can probably
define the problems with the existing site in much more detail than I could.

~~~
ForrestN
@asr: we're getting kind of into the weeds, but you're talking about the
difference between a professional _design_ and a professional _designer_.

To maybe put it more easily, and to bridge the gap between the two usages: the
facelift looks like it was made by a professional _designer_ and is thus a
professional _design_. The existing site looks amateur because it appears as
if the person who designed it would be unable to charge for their design
services.

To argue the opposite would require some kind of weird personification of the
design, as in, "this design is a wage-earning participant in its field," which
just doesn't comport with how people use "professional" when they apply it to
products and especially to designs.

~~~
ForrestN
@tptacek You aren't listening, you're getting all hot and bothered about a
claim you keep hearing that I'm not making. I don't think that professional
design is important for startups.

It's a bit much to obsess about semantics and then throw your hands up in
despair that people make the kinds of distinctions that counter your points.

Who, exactly, is saying to you that "only professional designers can create
sites that will pass muster with buyers in the real world"?

~~~
tptacek
I'm just pushing back on the word "unprofessional". I care less than it looks
like I do. :)

------
tptacek
Isn't the "gold club" positioning counterproductive? How does it benefit EXEC
to claim exclusivity? They're as-yet- unchallenged in their market. Their goal
should be to broaden their base of customers as much as possible and establish
the normalcy of their service; in other words, to give the kinds of people who
do not have Hertz #1 Club Gold membership _permission_ to give EXEC their
money.

This design does exactly the opposite. It suggests that EXEC is something I
might pay attention to at approximately the same time as I start to consider
time-sharing private jets.

That aside: pitching entire redesigns over the HN transom is a great way to
start a meaningful conversation about positioning and branding, so, do more of
these.

~~~
justjimmy
While your points are valid, I don't feel it's all shouldered on this
redesign. The name of the company 'Exec' is already giving the user the notion
of 'exclusive' or 'executive', 'high end' services.

The redesign fits the name, but does it fit the product? Without the company's
vision/style guide, it's hard to do a redesign. I think it's a great job
provided the information gleamed from the current website and the company
name.

~~~
Alex3917
"The name of the company 'Exec' is already giving the user the notion of
'exclusive' or 'executive', 'high end' services."

Just because a little is good, doesn't mean that twice as much is better. I
think the name does a great job at subconsciously making people feel a little
bit important, but I think having the rest of site designed around exclusivity
actually undermines the positioning they are going for. They're targeting
young professionals who are willing to spend some extra money if it can make
them more productive, not celebutante wannabes.

~~~
justjimmy
And what position are they going for? The point is this – everyone can look at
the current site and come away with a different understanding of the
position/approach of Exec. The designer is working with the constraint of 1.
the name 2. the product/service from what _he_ reads and understands from the
current site. Unless he has the brief or sat down with the Exec team, there's
no way he can nail it down. And neither can you (unless, ofcourse, you know
exactly what Exec is and their approach/target audience/demo graphics etc).

ie: They could target more than young professionals - what about people who
have disabilities? Maybe they can set up a weekly Exec service for groceries
for handicapped people. Exec is a startup and they're no doubt iterating their
product, and customer discovery and all that jazz. I feel it's unfair to look
at a site, then comment on the design, when neither knows Exec's target
customers (even when Exec is still discovering themselves).

~~~
tptacek
You're missing the argument. Obviously, Exec can position however they'd like.
But positioning as a luxury good in an wide-open market with mainstream-market
pricing is not a particularly great strategy. Do you know what the fully
loaded cost of a full-time PA is? _Way_ higher than Exec'ing jobs. If they're
targeting the market of people aspiring to have FT PA's, they're leaving a
shitload of money on the table and needlessly narrowing their focus.

This thread is a good case study for nerdly misconceptions about marketing. I
suspect that to a lot of HN readers, "marketing" means "what _feelings_ you're
expected to have while using the product", like, "this is gold and black for
the same reason that Github has Star Wars imagery on their 404 page". No.
Marketing is first and foremost about subsetting people into groups,
predicting what those groups will pay for a good or service, and then picking
the group. The "feelings" business serves that goal, not the other way around.

So, first, you'd want to decide "am I going after the same people that Hertz
#1 Club Gold is" (ie, the kinds of people who spend 5 figures a month solely
on travel expenses) and _then_ say "let's class up the website a bit".

------
wdewind
The original EXEC page is much better.

First, current tells me EXEC will do anything for $25/hr, yours tells me they
will buy my groceries for $25/hr (cutting the mass appeal down IMMENSELY)

Second, and much more importantly, EXEC's current design works within real
constraints. For one thing, you mocked up all this social proof that likely
does not exist for an early stage startup. That takes up about 50% of your
design.

There are some things you improve on (more frequent calls to the primary
action etc.), but the problem with doing design like this is you end up
focusing almost entirely on aesthetic stuff, as well as cookie cutter things
you can plug into any site (ie: testimonials etc.), instead of the real task
at hand. If you want to improve your design skills you have to get some real
constraints. Design without constraints isn't.

~~~
swombat
I'm pretty sure getting quotes from people like Paul Graham and early interest
from a bunch of early adopters is well within the "real constraints" of
someone like Justin Khan. Social proof is easy when you're the founder of
Justin.TV and SocialCam and a YC partner.

~~~
tptacek
Hey, wait a minute: that's not the kind of social proof this mockup included.

~~~
swombat
All the social proof on this design is within reach of the Exec team.

Listing them all:

\- YC startups using Exec - we already know they are, check.

\- Videos of people using exec - are you kidding me? The founder of Justin.TV
would struggle to make a couple of nice testimonial videos from trustworthy
looking people? check.

\- Names of people who use Exec - see first point. check.

\- Profiles of execs. easy. check.

\- Quote from Paul Graham. Should take about 20 seconds to bang out an email.
check.

\- Quote from Elon Musk. I don't know if he's connected to YC/Khan/etc, but I
would be surprised if that was more than one or two phone calls away if that
was really needed. That said, any other reputable figure will do. check.

\- "Millions of people" - ok, that's not true yet. So change it to thousands
of people (probably true already).

~~~
tptacek
"Thousands of businesses use Exec".

"Here's real people testifying about Exec".

Zero doubt that Exec could put together "social proof" that YC companies use
and love the service. But that's not their target market, is it? It's not the
targeting that _this redesign_ uses. I'm commenting on the redesign. I'm not
arguing whether it would be good for them to leverage the YC network on their
front page. This redesign doesn't do that.

Incidentally: quotes from Musk and Graham are (I'd suggest) counterproductive.
Exec is priced for the mainstream. They're following TaskRabbit's price point.
Look at TaskRabbit jobs; they're all bachelors getting shit out of their 4th
floor studio apartments or assembling Ikea furniture. Why would Exec adopt a
message of "this is a service targeted at the Elon Musks of the world"? How
many FT PA's does Musk already have? I think he has some of them in space.

I think you're (accidentally) moving the goalposts.

I like the idea that the founder of Justin.tv can, because of his amazing
video powers, generate compelling videographic social proof for any product.
Maybe he should sell those super expensive Vertu phones too. ;)

~~~
swombat
_But that's not their target market, is it?_

I don't know, you'd have to ask the Exec team.

Me, I think that's a great starting target market. It's not enough as a final
objective, but if they can saturate that market, they're in a good position to
expand to the rest.

------
byalice
I like it. People who've commented before me seem to have very specific
criticisms regarding how your design conveys brand but remember that this is a
_redesign_, not an absolute final product to be shipped by the company. and by
the way, this is way better than the current site. in the sense that it
actually conveys a brand - whereas the original is far more neutral (thanks
twitter bootstrap).

functionally, I would try to establish more of a visual hierarchy as you go
down the page - the yellow color accent throws me off as I go down and the
path that my eye intuitively follows is all over the place.

aesthetically, consider introducing a third accent color (maybe grey?) to
round out the gold and white content you've got going on.

nice job!

~~~
adrianhoward
_this is way better than the current site. in the sense that it actually
conveys a brand - whereas the original is far more neutral_

I've no idea if this was a deliberate choice in the case of the current site -
but having neutral visual branding can be a very effective technique for
organisations to exploit for a couple of reasons:

1) The visual brand isn't the only factor that effects conversion. When you're
exploring your product/market fit it can be _much_ more cost effective to work
with a neutral visual brand and tweak your other positioning mechanisms,
rather than create multiple visual brands that target different markets.

2) It's relatively easy to evolve a neutral visual brand into something more
targeted. It's much harder to go the other way.

Basically - if you're going to go strong in one direction you need to be
pretty sure that it's the right direction.

To pick one real world example. I did some usability testing work on a
franchise of bed'n'breakfast style "holiday" hotels. We were looking at a
couple of design alternatives. One of which was very plain and "vanilla". The
other was considerably more "polished", included some nice professional
photography, tours, etc.

The "polished" design performed _far_ worse. It put-off some of the low-end
users (by looking "polished" it no longer looked "cheap") while not really
increasing conversions in the high-end group. In contrast the "plain" brand
worked well across everybody - by neither looking "cheap" or "expensive".

Before we did the testing many folk commented that the polished design was
"nicer" and was "more designed". It wasn't. It was a different design. A
neutral visual brand is still branding.

------
JGuo
Well that's interesting... I redesigned the Exec splash page as well.

<http://dreamersofday.com/Exec-Redesign>

I like your color scheme and how you focused on convincing prospective
customers that Exec is a trusted and vetted service.

------
jaredstenquist
The new design idea is great. The lower hanging fruit for conversion is
addressing the ~5s pageload time. I was left without graphics for nearly 4
seconds (10mbit duplex connection)

<http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/#!/EJEPcYv2P/iamexec.com>

[https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights#url=i...](https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights#url=iamexec.com&mobile=false&rule=MinifyJavaScript)

Also, what do we need SSL for on a landing page?

~~~
qeorge
Lots of JS in the <head>. Moving that to the bottom of the page would help the
perceived load time a lot.

------
Alex3917
I don't like this redesign. Exec just launched, and they are still in the
phase where they are trying to teach early adopters what the site is and what
it can do for them. This doesn't do that.

Just because something is pretty doesn't mean it's targeting the right group
of people or telling the right story. I've gone through four rounds of
revisions on the new web startup I'm doing in the last couple weeks for this
reason. With every revision it's actually getting significantly uglier, but
also more closely aligned with telling the story we want to tell to the users
we see as our early adopters, so ultimately better.

There's always time to make the website pretty later once you nail the story
and have a core group of users it resonates with, but making the website
pretty for the sake of having a pretty website is always a huge mistake.

Additionally, the way you write a good design brief is by figuring out what
you want the site to subconsciously remind people of, and then finding a bunch
of design elements from other sites that meet this goal. To me this reminds me
of one of those 'me too' social networks for video gamers because of the dark
colors, the slick gradients/shadows, and the flash-game style UI. It
emphatically does not remind me of FreshDirect, which would be a much more
appropriate type of website to borrow design inspiration from.

~~~
kyro
As a definite-future-customer, this is my interpretation of EXEC: a VIP-like
personal concierge service, ready 24/7 to provide assistance. I designed to
that vision; I didn't work aimlessly. Thanks for the feedback, though. Much
appreciated.

~~~
tptacek
It's $25/hour. There are landscapers that cost that much. Our cleaning service
costs _way_ more. Is this really a VIP service? Why would they want it to be?
Isn't what makes stuff like this interesting that it uses technology to make
personal assistants available to normal people, not just VIPs?

~~~
kyro
It's more about "you too can feel VIP with your personal concierge", and less
about "you need to be wealthy to use this service". I will agree that the
product positioning isn't 100% clear.

~~~
tptacek
That positioning says EXEC is a luxury good. If you're trying to establish a
product in a (nearly) empty market, why stigmatize it that way?

------
cemregr
Current design: "we built this in 10 minutes with twitter bootstrap to test
our MVP".

Redesign: "this is a product, and a brand".

Also, very smart idea to do facelifts to YC companies. Many coming out of this
batch have really weak design chops (the screen sharing site looked like an
SEO landing page) and by focusing on YC companies, he increases his chances of
being noticed. \

------
azolotov
I think this is a great design graphically, and an interesting concept. I was
asking myself the following questions though:

1\. What happens when you click 'Hire an Exec', or 'Sign Up'?

2\. Why are there two different calls to action - 'Hire an Exec' and 'Find an
Exec near you'?

3\. Design isn't just about pretty pixels. Where's the content, and why is
there dummy content in its place?

4\. Where did the 'In the News' section go from their original design? It must
have been important enough to put it at the very top. What assumptions did you
make that led you to remove it, or move it down to the footer?

5\. In general, what assumptions did you make and how did they influence your
design?

------
zitterbewegung
Black on yellow seems to hurt my eyes. I'm not sure its a good choice.

~~~
gukjoon
Ugh. Spoken like a true Ravens fan.

In all seriousness, yeah. Gilt went from black/yellow to predominantly
black/white for a good reason.

I do like how the yellow pops though. Unfortunately, it also makes my eyes
bleed. Maybe try a duller yellow, like goldenrod. My emacs theme is goldenrod
on dark gray and it is pleasant.

------
egallardo
I respect the balls it takes to do something like this. Like someone else
said, with design, everyone feels entitled to critique it. Yet, there are
people on here who are defending the current design of iamexec.com.

The proof to me that your design is better was my initial reaction to it.
Speaking for myself, I would never hire someone from a website that doesn't
look professional. Your design instantly felt like an upgrade, even if there
are things that could be improved. Most people aren't taking into
consideration how difficult it is to design something without any input.

The changes I'd suggest are..

1\. Focus on one call to action. You have 2 currently. 2\. After the 1,2,3
limit the amount of yellow on the page. It's overpowering. 3\. Remove the
tagline just below the picture. You don't need it and everything else can move
up 4\. Social proof is great but there's a lot going on at the bottom of the
page. Keep the user focused on the goal of getting them into the site. 5\. Use
lorem ipsum for dummy text

Anyway, keep hustlin'! I'm looking forward to next week's design..

------
jermaink
I think your approach is both a nice idea and a nice result.

Alex3917 might be true but I think the superfluity of Bootstrap designs might
slowly become deterrent to any first-time visitor. Of course, the functions
are important but so much in interaction design is about colors, structure and
individuality.

Let me give you an example. As a programmer, you come into a room and you
often don´t care if it is furnished yet. All you care about is the room
arrangement, electrics, the light, how fast you can access which room, what is
nearby etc. You focus on functionality. The inside might look like pigsty
headquarters but you can still imagine how it can look like once you do the
interior design. In a nutshell: The average HN reader might be this kind of
visitor.

The usual -non HN reader- visitor cares about functionality too, but he does´t
want to enter a construction work. And as he does´t want to challenge his
imagination, he might expect good impressions, giving him the incentive to
visit this place again.

------
cs702
All that yellow and black reminds me of Hertz...

------
Tyrannosaurs
Your place holder text is a bit random and it takes a few seconds to work out
that that's what it is. You might not want to use lorem ipsum but what you've
got right now is a bit confusing.

I like the yellow but I agree that there could be a little less of it.

------
Tichy
I don't like the gold/VIP association. The thing is, RGB gold is not real
gold. So the message is really that you are a sucker if you fall for it.

Also, if a company plates it's offices with real gold, it means that they are
taking too much money from me.

------
dimarco
It's a good first shot, although a lot of the feedback provided by HNers seems
to be on point.

It's funny that it only took a few months to get sick of the Twitter Bootstrap
look, felt like it took a year to get sick of the 37Signals/Basecamp rip offs.

------
davidu
The best part of seeing these is that the company can find out what at least
one talented designer see's as their value prop and message and then map it to
what they want people to see and understand. Design then supports that vision.

------
massarog
Well done, I dig this style much more than their current design.

------
dkrich
Two problems: any serious redesign should involve several templates that are
thoroughly tested to ensure that users are interacting with the correct parts
so that as many sales are squeezed out of the site as possible. Also, nobody
reads reverse typeset. Just sayin'.

~~~
dkrich
Sorry, didn't mean to be a dick. But I think web designers confuse beauty with
functionality. While it is certainly possible to have both, a beautiful design
does not guarantee proper utilization.

The purpose of a painting in an art gallery or an Ansel Adams photograph is to
make the viewer experience the beauty of the art. That's the primary purpose.
The primary purpose of an ecommerce site is to make sales and get customers
what they need. These are two very different goals. Just because a website
happens to exist in two-dimensions does not mean that beauty or brand tie-in's
(like the gold trim) are the most important considerations. If it were, Gmail
wouldn't be the most successful email client on the planet.

------
thechut
I think tptacek might have designed their current website.

~~~
lbo
That seems very likely... His zealotry totally misses the point and comes off
as very defensive.

My 2 cents: when I saw Exec's real page I thought, "Interesting idea, not for
me." When I saw Kyro's redesign I thought "This product seems awesome! I could
definitely see myself using it." Kyro's design looks far more welcoming and
professional and it does a much better job of making me think the product
stands out. It reminds me of heroku and gilt groupe's excellent designs
(albeit it's not quite there yet). I think those are good design's to mimic
for Exec's desired demographic.

------
dskang
In case anyone didn't notice the link in the post, here's EXEC's current
website: <https://iamexec.com/>

------
badalyan
Great idea. Great design.

------
zanst
Awful.

------
brendanobrien
Spec work for startups? ... Spec work in general?

