I found it over blown. It took me far too long looking past the ducks to find out what Ente actually does. The design team don’t seem to be interested in the product.
If you were being fair, designers typically don't decide the website strategy or write the copy. Ente's site seems heavily optimized for a search-driven funnel – they are targeting people explicitly searching for 'photo storage.' When that's your primary acquisition channel, you can afford to be less pedantic about copy variety. They keep the copy incredibly sparse and let the context do the heavy lifting, there is also no need to repeat descriptions on-site when that context is already handled by the search description and App Store links. When people arrive on the site, they know what they've found.
In terms of the design, they cut through a lot of the bullshit developers and designers do on the web. The execution is great and there are a lot of high-fidelity details: the scale is on point, the text hierarchy is great, the use of colour is smart, it has a fantastic, almost brochure-like layout, and generally, the design is consistent throughout and plays an important role in customer experience and branding their product.
You're not their customer, they're not targeting Hacker News as a potential sales funnel. If your takeaway is the design team isn't interested in the product, I hope to God you don't work in web.
Just showed the homepage to a non-technical family member and they are interested in using the service before I even got to scrolling. They said "ooh that looks nice" when they read
Safe home for your photos".
...I was not at all confused about what it was when I looked at it.
When I saw "safe home for your photos" I assumed it was a platform for uploading photos via an app or on the web. "Cross platform" is even a sub-heading. Do you use iCloud or Google Photos?
Sometimes I see this complaint for products here and I am just... confounded. Are people unable to use context clues to infer meaning? I really don't mean to be rude here. It feels like there is some grander disconnect like if someone younger looked at a floppy disk and didn't know that it was a save icon.
Is it an app or a web service? What does the app look like? What does the web service look like?
>Sometimes I see this complaint for products here and I am just... confounded.
I think you probably don't have as much experience with the depth and breadth of peoples comprehension of online design language as you might think you do.
"Safe home for your photos" - even this is ambiguous. Photos, as in hard copy? Or digital images? Or digital photos?
You might have the grok to understand this is a digital service, but there is a wide variety of users out there who won't get this, at all.
And I think that is limiting the reach of this service. In the rush to be design leaders, the details about what the product is and how it works are not being communicated properly.
I took another look. It's still not clear to me - do I need to use their special app? Can I use a web page? Do I give it access to my iCloud Photos and it does it all for me? What does the app look like? Why can't I use Photos.app, and what differentiates Ente from iCloud Photos - at first (assumptive) glance, it appears redundant.
I am not convinced by the marketing. I stand by my original observation that it appears the designers are not at all interested in the product they are pimping and seem instead to just want to do cool, distracting design language.
Usability fail at the marketing level doesn't help reach critical mass. I predict Ente will fail.
In terms of the design, they cut through a lot of the bullshit developers and designers do on the web. The execution is great and there are a lot of high-fidelity details: the scale is on point, the text hierarchy is great, the use of colour is smart, it has a fantastic, almost brochure-like layout, and generally, the design is consistent throughout and plays an important role in customer experience and branding their product.
You're not their customer, they're not targeting Hacker News as a potential sales funnel. If your takeaway is the design team isn't interested in the product, I hope to God you don't work in web.