It's almost disheartening that there are folks out there that like the clump, cluttered busy mess that is sourcehut.org over the clean, beautiful design of the Stripe website.
The Stripe website (just checked it out) might be visually clean, but it is also clean from information what it is all about. SourceHut in comparison is packed with inforformation. I mean, compare the two side by side (i had to scale them down because at 100% they believe i'm using a mobile phone - damn, how much i hate "responsive" CSS, all it responds to is to assumptions its web developers make):
On the left side SourceHut has almost everything you want to know, on the right side Stripe has... a couple of background images, one button to "START NOW" (start what?) and to contact sales (for what?).
Stripe's site is a classic case where form took precedence over function.
When I look at Stripe's website, I immediately read: "The new standard in online payments". Ok, they handle online payments, that's really clear.
When I look at Sourcehut, the first thing I read is that Drew DeVault posted: "Announcing the SourceHut project hub". Ok? Is that really the first thing I should know? Then I read further and still have zero idea what the actual tools are until I actually dig deeper.
The whole point of the Stripe website is to make people want to use Stripe. That's the function, and if a lot of form helps with that, the function achieved. And I'm pretty sure the Strips homepage is doing a good job drumming up business considering their success.
Stripe's website doesn't tell you anything about what exactly it provides though. At best you can infer that they provide some sort of API for accepting payments based on the code snippet they have at the bottom, but beyond that nothing else is there - and even that is something you have to infer.
SourceHut's site tells you what it does, how it does it, what features you can find in there and a bunch of other things. It is packed with information.
Not necessarily. You don't (well, most people) want to know what a product is, you want to know what it can do for you.
In other words, the value it offers you. How it enables you to achieve what you want to achieve. That's what matters, the technical functionality does not.
I don't care that Nike uses vulcanized rubber and cotton, I care that my friends will think they look cool, and thus make me look cool.
So they focus on communicating that value proposition rather than an info dump about the product.
Sourcehut says "lots of open source mini services that work without JavaScript". Cool, why do I care? Is there a cost saving? Would my devs prefer this? Can it do something other paid services can't? Why should I use it?
It's disheartening to me that there are people out there that like the busy yet low-density over-designed mess that is stripe.com over the simple, functional design of the sourcehut website.
It's particularly disheartening to me because those people seem to include all web designers.
https://i.imgur.com/kdKK3cY.png
On the left side SourceHut has almost everything you want to know, on the right side Stripe has... a couple of background images, one button to "START NOW" (start what?) and to contact sales (for what?).
Stripe's site is a classic case where form took precedence over function.