Taken from STM’s article, Josh from Yolkk looks at 20 websites using expertise to give you tips and tricks on creating your own stunning and high converting website. Unsurprisingly we gained actionable takeaways from some unique and eye-catching website design. Nevertheless, more surprisingly some of “the best” website homepages showed us exactly what not to do!
Our list of websites came from Southern Tide Media’s article “16 of the Best Website Homepage Design Examples”.(
00:00 Intro
00:40 FreshBooks SAAS
04:37 AirBnB
06:52 Mint SAAS
12:15 Dropbox
16:05 White House
18:11 4 Rivers Restaurant
22:31 Jill Konrath, Author
25:18 Boxbee, Storage
27:30 eWedding
29:10 Basecamp SAAS
31:10 Charity Water
33:20 TechValidate SAAS
36:38 Wired Mag
38:20 Asos, Clothing
40:34 Nike
41:52 Like & Subscribe!
Here’s some key points:
FreshBooks
freshbooks.com
Not a bad site but did feel somewhat crowded. Their social proof in form of 4.5 star review bar detracted from purpose due to it’s orange colour. We discussed why the designers made this decision but the colours red and orange are associated with negative reviews.
QuickBooks (UK)
quickbooks.com
Freshbooks competitor QuickBooks had a much more structured layout the helped the eye navigate the page. A more consistent colour palette also aided their design. Great example of clean design that helps the user find what they need.
AirBnB
airbnb.com
AirBnB don’t say what they do on their homepage, they show the user. Clever homepage to get people started straight off the bat.
MINT
mint.inuit.com
Clean, beautiful website. Bold single colour theme that’s slightly lessened by associated brands at page top. Hero image is fairly low resolution. Easy to understand what product is about and clear CTA – download app.
Dropbox
dropbox.com
Dark background draws attention to white centre image. Use big colourful images as you scroll down. Very clever design that works.
WeTransfer
wetransfer.com
No barriers to using their service. Get value straight away with their frictionless design.
The White House
whitehouse.gov
Beautiful bold image. Navigation bar looks great.
4 Rivers Smokehouse
4rsmokehouse.com
Video background that does take a second to load. Brilliant video with lots of movement and new shorts to hold user attention. Multiple call-to-actions that potentially aren’t needed.
Jill Konrath
jillkonath.com
Hubspot site. Does well at drawing user attention to Jill being an authority on sales. Doesn’t use colours very well, usage contrasts.
Boxbee
boxbee.com
Great hero image with bold elements to draw attention. Average to low quality WordPress website.
eWedding
ewedding.com
Expensive domain but website is looking tired. Nothing bold to draw user attention. Colours feel dated.
Basecamp
basecamp.com
Bad website for size of userbase with some great takeaways to bear in mind. Their tagline is long:
“The refreshingly simple, and remarkably effective, project management platform.”
Many unnecessary words that make reading it more difficult. Should read:
“The simple and effective Project Management Platform.”
As you scroll down they have an essay of information which isn’t good. Further to this if one or two sentences were highlighted in bold it can draw attention to users not willing to read but Basecamp have highlighted a third in bold making it visually messy and users unsure where plant their attention.
I did however like that a lot of the menu appeared in the websites footer. It allows the top navigation to be tailored to the majority of users, not the minority.
Charity Water
Charitywater.org
Like AirBnB and WeTransfer they’ve setup a very frictionless design. Clear what customers are mean’t to do and has been made easy for them.
TechValidate
surveymonkey.com/techvalidate/
Clean website with attention drawing visuals. Don’t explain what they actually do very well but their CTA is getting user to watch video which provides information and sale. Font isn’t vey exciting or bold.
Wired Magazine
wired.com
Bold colours in images. Thumbnails are so important for traction on articles.
Nike
nike.com
QR code on homepage is first instance I’ve seen of this. They know I’m using a desktop computer and therefore having links that ask user to download via App Store wouldn’t work. QR code is great takeaway.
Asos
asos.com
Brand has two separate audiences, men and women. The website displays very little until that decision has been made. User being forced to make that choice ensures they can target their audience with a much higher success rate. Consistent bold colour branding throughout.
We also looks at:
and our website:
We touched upon HubSpots very similar article: