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by Gustomaximus 3004 days ago
Without knowing any existing pages or stats from the original page this claim is weak bravado.

I worked out one time Ive more than 300 million online sales/signups/downloads under my belt. I like to think that gives me some credibility. And I agree with OP that simple, basic and even ugly pages can be extremely effective.
1 comments
moeamaya 3004 days ago
Even more than bravado, I’ve dedicated my entire life’s work to this claim.

Design is incredibly undervalued on HN, and I make contrarian claims to not only ruffle a few feathers, but because it’s a fundamental thesis of mine.

Note aesthetics are also a functional beauty to me, I enjoy both refactoring code and typesetting a landing page as part of the design process.

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andkon 3004 days ago
I feel like my original answer ended up playing to that tendency to undervalue design here. Which ain't great. I guess my point was that it's super easy to look at a design and feel like it looks great and miss the fact that design is developed closer to the conclusion of a process that begins with developing a compelling message and story. Because folks miss that, "what's a great landing page?" is a question that usually ends up delivering a lot of landing pages that look the dopest, appeal to the most people, whose design and message is accessible, rather than landing pages that are actually successful at doing what they need to do (which may fly right by folks not in the intended audience).

Fwiw, I think you're right. 3x is probably what the match of design and message results in, especially because a lot of what software does can't be described merely in words. It needs design to put the accent on the right things, or else will fail to communicate (most of the time).

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majewsky 3004 days ago
> Design is incredibly undervalued on HN

Looks like we're reading different HNs.

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mrhappyunhappy 3002 days ago
Not really. I can concur with HN and developers in general not giving a shit about design. I can’t tell you how many developers I’ve spoken to who tried launching their own product only to go silent after I sent them a design proposal. Devs seem to have a very limited understanding of value of design.
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