I've met Ling and I know a bunch of people who worked on her site over the last decade. She's definitely an interesting character, and very good at marketing.
Wow. Amazing that it works almost perfectly with JS disabled. I really like the menu/navigation functionality as well, at least on desktop. Surprisingly good website despite its appearance.
The contrast on that side is super low. I’m viewing with grayscale inverted in low light (at night) and the site is totally unreadable. Wouldn’t call it a great landing page.
Pretty funny, but it looks like macOS Mojave does this already - there's a "Turn on Do Not Disturb when mirroring to TVs and projectors" setting in System Preferences > Notifications > Do Not Disturb - which might explain that development seemed to stop more than a year ago: https://muzzleapp.com/updates/ Unless there's something else that it does which isn't covered by that preference setting?
And I guess sometimes you're sitting in front of your Mac with others without using any presentation mode. Muting notifications could be really helpful then.
For future reference, the smart person creates a second login on their machine with no notifications allowed and with nothing logged in for presenting.
The point of the app is it does this for you automatically when it detects screen sharing, negating the chance that you forget to turn it off yourself.
To those who find the concept hilarious.. The specific value proposition of this app is "automatically turn off notifications when screen-sharing." Automating everyday tasks seems like exactly the type of thing we use computers and software for.
Not only do I completely agree, the original 'panic.com' site is generic looking and usability annoying. "We do generic icons for a living...you have to hover over them to get any info". Really?
Agreed, that‘s a possibility. Although a properly tested landing page probably shouldn’t crash a relatively mainstream browser on current version regardless of its quirks (technical correctness isn’t everything), this wouldn’t be an excuse for the quirks nor would it be a reason to not love the landing page for other reasons.
On the contrary, I believe developers should stand up to Apple where they can, and the browser is likely the only place for it, given they have zero leverage in negotiations on native apps, in which Apple is making life very very hard for developers who simply do not fall in line with their guidance.
If Apple will willy-nilly reject app store (both Mac and iOS) apps, retroactively change rules to kill competition (look up what they did with steam) and randomly start banning popular frameworks (electron apps are the latest victim), and still insist on being W3C non-compliant, in a blatant effort to force users and developers to their walled garden, developers need to grow a backbone and take Apple on where they can. If Mac users really want your webapp, Firefox/Opera.... are just an install away
Rereading ancestor comments I think we are on the same page actually, but in case I’m wrong…
In general, I could appreciate the decision to make a stance in this way on a personal level, but when evaluating a real landing page for a paid product from business perspective—which would be an inseparable aspect—I would not be able to recommend preferring “technically correct” over “actually working”.
This does not only hurt sales/business, but also causes stress to non-technical end users. All they experience is their browser exiting when they visit the page (thankfully, tabs are preserved on next launch); they are not concerned with implementation and do not become more aware of Apple’s standard non-conformance as a result.
A non-commercial website oriented towards developers, or indeed a joke such as in this case, is fine, of course.
In short, violating open standards—bad, taking a stance—good, hurting regular users and business—bad.
Why? It seems very generic and bland. Or is that the point? Also, it make you scroll through a lot of stuff to find what you are presumably going to the site to find. They bury the important stuff way down at the bottom.
Yeah, most 'landing pages' are pretty useless exercises in annoying your user.
I believe it gives you all the "big picture" information you need in a very simple way (maybe that's why you call it bland). But I do find simplicity important.
This is hard to do with a product as complex as Stripe Atlas (just Google "form a company" and click around to see what I mean). But they pulled it off. And it looks beautiful.
TLDR: I love a landing page that turns complexity into simplicity.
None. Absolutely none. I have never "loved" a landing page. They are always too clever, too designed, too cluttered, too austere, too "gorgeous", too self-indulgent, too self-important, etc.
I like a landing page whose implementation makes it clear that the people behind it have thought long and hard about the people who will visit, and what they want.
I like a page that's clean, clear, spare, easy to find the things people are looking for when they come to a landing page.
There are so many things I really don't care about when I land on your site, and a few things I really do care about. Visit the web site for a museum to find out how much it costs to visit[0]:
> Plan your day
> Your visit
> Discover
> Become a friend
> Memberships
> Admissions
> Audio guides
> Day tickets
> $18
Then you want opening times and which holidays they are closed, and the page is comprehensive and detailed, and from 2008 and clearly wrong.
Absolutely no thought about what a visitor is trying to accomplish, and instead is all about trying to ... well, I don't know what they're trying to do.
I like a landing page that has clearly catered for the visitor, and not just to show off how wonderful their web design skills are.
to be fair, it's just a landing page - not a life changing experience. I don't know that I share OPs enthusiasm, but I've definitely never liked or loved a landing page.
"If you have any comments about our WEB page, you can write us at the address shown above. However, due to the limited number of personnel in our corporate office, we are unable to provide a direct response."
Lol
Well. BH owns Geico or prolly the largest shareholder. Also one of their most lucrative investments.
I personally dislike Geico’s spammy marketing but I guess it’s minting billions for BH.
If it were to me, they’d be a law that all insurance companies need to be a co-op or non profit. Profit in insurance (esp for health insurance) makes no sense for a country.
Looking at my "Designs" bookmarks folder, half of the websites have been shutdown and the other half I don't "love" any more.
This proves two things for me, design has nothing to do with the success of a product, and the second: design is subjective and changes not only from person to person but also for you, there is an absolute chance that one design that you love now, may hate in future.
Obviously, there are examples of both cases (e.g. Facebook is an "ok" design but Stripe is beautiful).
Then there are other things. For example, this CB Insights post (https://www.cbinsights.com/research/personal-finance-apps-st...) mentions a study where "Stanford psychologist BJ Fogg gauged people’s reactions to various websites and asked them what factors played the biggest part in their assessments, design was unanimously the most commonly-cited reason for trusting or not trusting a particular site."
So I wouldn't say design has nothing to do with the success of a product, but it is true that it's not enough to make a product good.
I have to agree. I agonised over the design of our landing page but eventually came to the same conclusion.
Plain text that gets as many selling points into the eyes of the visitor above the fold is what I believe is the most sensible route if you're debating bit to design your landing page.
I think clean and attractive is key. At least for me. If you have a product I want and your landing page is well designed and clearly explains the product, then I am much more likely to try your product.
I assume, right or wrong, that if you out that much work into your landing page, you must have put the same into your product.
Now if your product stinks after trying it, I'll leave just as fast. But at least I have it a try. I'm sure I'm not unique in that regard.
Now, if you are resource constrained, focus on the product first, of course.
The thing I absolutely hate about both Notion and Airtable is that both have all sorts of dirty dark patterns in hidden ways. Like signup with gauth will ask for permissions to read contact list. They’ll then secretly spam your contact list for “explosive growth”. Fuck that!
Seriously Google. You need to disable that shit. I signed up and immediately regretted my decision.
Oh, wasn't really aware that it would be so large in some cases. Thank you for this feedback. Could you tell me which kind of device you were using, I guess a relatively small mobile phone?
I struggled to answer that question myself while researching for my own product's landing page.
I decided to go for a very different path and create something that could showcase the product as soon as possible, with simple and objective copy for people who wanted to understand it better.
I do very much love it as it is right now, but of course I am biased, and of course I am open to criticism to improve it. But the principle (clear copy + showcase the product working) I will probably keep.
I like it, but I think it would be nicer without the big list of "regional maps" at the bottom. I'm not really sure how best to include that list (users have told us, "list all the regions so I can ctrl-F for them! or else I hate you!"
Next I want to add some stats to the landing page. Like, top 25 pinball machines that are on location. And each one listed would be a link to show that machine on the map.
Have you considered having the map be optional (a click away)? To preserve mobile data if nothing else.
Also, given how often turnover happens, a link next to each itemized machine to notify you of changes (and perhaps another to notify participating owners of mechanical problems)?
I wish the 49ers playoff and INDISC weren't the same weekend.
Well, the main, searchable map is one click away ("Explore the Map"). But yeah, that map on the landing page that only shows where the regions are, we could simply hide that on mobile. We are really de-emphasizing the regions in exchange for the single map where you can search anywhere. I don't like the search experience on that single map, though. But it'll take some work to redo it. I want it to be more like the app search experience.
If an operator is tagged at a location, and that operator has granted us permission to notify them, then they get a daily email of any comments left on their machines. Roughly half of them take advantage of this (147 out of 299). We should probably remind operators of this feature more often, given that it's now buried in a 6 year old blog post.
My daughter's birthday is on the same weekend as INDISC! I used to like going to that tourney.
Loaded fast, that's a thumbs up from me! Most of the landing pages I've seen on this thread have been very pretty, no doubt, but on my poor little computer they weren't the speediest of websites.
Clicked on the website you linked, bam, it's loaded. It's also very simple too! No distracting shapes or clunky animations, it's just a very satisfying website. +1
I'm tired of slow software so I vowed to make all my personal projects perform well. Along the way I wanted to add comments to my blog, tried disqus, and figured I could do one better (at least for me).
I've seen worse, but in my opinion, this is not a good landing page. It doesn't offer much in terms of actual, actionable information -- only marketing-speak broadsides, the layout is hard to follow, if you change the font size to make it more usable (the size the page uses is far too large), then the layout breaks further, and so on.
- Tells you what the product does right at the top
- As it's a database library, and there are many other database libraries - the features are written in terms of how the product is different from the competition - goes into
- Code examples pretty soon, so you can really see what using it would be like.
Love their work, but the new website sucks. Let me look at things on my own time. But I guess a person who's tired of being worshipped for things they did twenty years ago would prefer you don't pore over them.
I can honestly say that I've never seen a landing page that I loved. Landing pages are those things that get in the way of what I'm really trying to find.
Quick feedback, the video on the landing page doesn't have a full screen button, or double click support, so the text can't be read (I'm using Firefox on desktop). It's pretty self explanatory so the text isn't super important but I think it takes away from the video unnecessarily.
However you can have the best product in the world, if you can't sell or market it (via a landing page for example), it will never be used (or very little).
I’m partial to https://reactfordataviz.com because it’s the best one I ever made and reaches 7th on Google for important keywords even tho it’s a sales page.
I like it because it loads fast, isn’t very designed, and focuses on decent copywriting instead of A/B testing quackery
And it converts well at an average of 50 cents per pageview.
Took about 4 years of customer research and conversations to arrive at that copy.
