Complete BS. Early '90s, perhaps — Users have advanced in their judgmental capabilities. And these days, you only have .5 seconds to make a first, splendid impression. The details are not the details, they are the product.
Can You Customize My Startup's Login Page?
21–30 of 55 posts
Re: Can You Customize My Startup's Login Page?
#22Terrible advice.
If no one can understand your work, then no one will use it.
Re: Can You Customize My Startup's Login Page?
#23This is poor advice. Lots of people make a quick judgement on your trustworthiness based on whether you at least have adequate design. If they turn away in 200 ms because of poor design, they will never be able to evaluate what your true value proposition is. Many decisions in a B2B context are defensively made, so as to avoid the risk of looking stupid in the future if things don't work out. Like the old saying, nob…
Is it poor advice though? I don't think the article is suggesting to skip designing a nice landing page -- the article is saying that customizing the _login page_ is not worth the effort, which I agree with. I can say that at my last company, redesigning the login page was bottom of the stack of things we wanted our first designer to work on. We just had a centered "Login with Google" button, our logo, and a email +…
The login page (or, i guess, signup) is where you are going to drop 90% of your funnel if you get it wrong.
Simple it good though, agree with that.
Re: Can You Customize My Startup's Login Page?
#24This is poor advice. Lots of people make a quick judgement on your trustworthiness based on whether you at least have adequate design. If they turn away in 200 ms because of poor design, they will never be able to evaluate what your true value proposition is. Many decisions in a B2B context are defensively made, so as to avoid the risk of looking stupid in the future if things don't work out. Like the old saying, nob…
> top comment on ycombinator dot news doesn't have the slightest clue about modern IT contracting
not surprised at all
Re: Can You Customize My Startup's Login Page?
#25This is poor advice. Lots of people make a quick judgement on your trustworthiness based on whether you at least have adequate design. If they turn away in 200 ms because of poor design, they will never be able to evaluate what your true value proposition is. Many decisions in a B2B context are defensively made, so as to avoid the risk of looking stupid in the future if things don't work out. Like the old saying, nob…
I had a contractor do house repairs before we put it on the market. We didn't ask him to, but he took his orbital sander and sanded the stair railings that lead to the front door. He said "people really notice this."
The very first prospect we had put his hand on the railing, looked up at the house, and said "this place seems to be well taken care of." And made a decent offer the next day.
So I'm in favor of detailing the sign up page with care.
Re: Can You Customize My Startup's Login Page?
#26I too once thought "Why don't girls like me for who I am, why do I have to dress nice and make myself presentable, this is just a façade and I want them to love me for who I am inside", but then I grew up and understood that appearances matter and there's no point in fighting people's feelings. You might say "don't worry buddy, my startup is really good and effective, don't mind the messy styling and presentation" bu…
Plus a quick shower once or twice a week
Re: Can You Customize My Startup's Login Page?
#27The thing is: We don't know what we should optimize first. Sure, We should make our core offering very good so that customer buys it. If We feel our offering is compelling enough, what's next?
Does optimizing landing page counts? or reworking that pesky login page?
Or, maybe main offering is not compelling enough?
Re: Can You Customize My Startup's Login Page?
#28This is poor advice. Lots of people make a quick judgement on your trustworthiness based on whether you at least have adequate design. If they turn away in 200 ms because of poor design, they will never be able to evaluate what your true value proposition is. Many decisions in a B2B context are defensively made, so as to avoid the risk of looking stupid in the future if things don't work out. Like the old saying, nob…
Yep. It takes so little time/money to tidy these pages and people notice when you haven't and it counts against you.
Re: Can You Customize My Startup's Login Page?
#29"The perfectionist dilemma is when a creator values the quality of a finished product such to the extent that it inhibits their ability to iterate, change, and even produce." - Adam Miller
I agree that this is a hard truth, especially among us developers, but I believe it has roots that can't be easily ignored. The amount of fear of failure when thinking about releasing a software product to the public (whether it's a website, a mobile/desktop app, or a game) is big and scary, not because your product stinks [0], but because you got afraid that there is something wrong out there that will push-back the user in his first 500ms of trying your product, hence, you Start Customizing Your Startup's Login Page again 'n' again..
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Re: Can You Customize My Startup's Login Page?
#30This is a nugget of something useful wrapped up in a way that turns it into naive advice that feels like a contrarian talking point.
The biggest risk to your funded startup is opportunity cost. You can (hopefully) find more funding and that can give you more time, but you cannot rewrite the time lost on the wrong thing.
This idea that your first cohort should be religious believers regardless of the public image of your startup is a nonsense bubble dream. If you need customers then your time is best spent on the details that could favour acquiring them. If you're running a B2B and you're spending resources on granular refinement of your public image, then yes that may well be highly inefficient vs going out to network and get LOIs / deals signed.
The summary of what was a good point is:
Really actually understand your business, your customer and your success criteria and chart as close to a straight line to that point as possible with minimal diversions.