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Haha check our scrappy website https://opral.com We got a bug report once that „the website is not loading“.
because at the time it was so strange to just have a search box in the middle of the page and nothing else.
Costly signalling is a decent way to think about it. Having a polished website/UI used to be more work/money so it served as a costly signal - companies would invest in that polish only after having some measure of success. Now its easy to achieve, so it no longer serves as a signal of success. But if you still believe it signals quality as it once did, you will be confused.
It’s not a great feeling to do from kick ass landing page to a SaaS that is clearly a bit broken and doesn’t even work on mobile. It makes you feel like people don’t even have their priorities straight, they just want to get you through the door but not deliver, like they don’t care about anything except money.
Like the cheap tricks of a fancy facade or design in a Main Street shop, but inside the product quality is low and the staff are generic, dressed nice, but not experts or truly caring about what they’re doing. it’s a betrayal, or feels like it, and not a great first touch point.
Nice username ! :) hahaha
I'm just now finishing our first marketing site after having like a crappy landing page for the last year. In part it's users having higher expectations. But in part it's also that no one takes you seriously unless you have a proper marketing website. And I don't mean customers but even providers or other companies for stuff like integrations. Everyone just ignores you.
Almost as if websites have come to be cheap suits for cubicle workers. Necessary by norm, but no signal of quality
It's just a case of sampling bias. You don't see startups that are not like this because they receive less publicity and press.
To an extent, having a polished established look is to build trust. If the website looks poorly executed, customers will walk. Think about it, if the site has zero reputation and looks really janky, would you put your credit card in? Your average consumer will say no.
It was always the way. Microsoft and Apple "fronting" like they were big companies before they were, as did everyone before them. It's just easier to do nice web design now.
If they'd had slick WordPress templates they probably would have used them too.
Next time you read the testimonial section, copy paste the author's name into Google. You'll find that they're made up. They also share the same stock photo of the smiling woman in red. It's borderline fraud.
I always check if the testimonial tweets are clickable.
You see the same thing with influencers. Attractive people with polished perfect lives and comfortable wealth. It’s what the market responds to.
Everyone is "fake it 'til you make it" today. But Microsoft really was, too. There was some story about a shared tie that was worn to talk to the "shirts" at IBM in the early days. No idea about garters, which were also part of the IBM dress code at the time. Not sure about Apple's early days, but there are certainly many stories of Jobs' "reality distortion field."