Show HN: My low-tech, 1997-style site helped me adopt thousands of subscribers
I run a weekly humorous newsletter about the tech industry/tech jobs called TechLoaf (https://www.techloaf.io/).
After experimenting, A/B/C/D/E testing, etc I found that using the lowest, simplest landing page possible actually led me to gain thousands more followers and a much higher conversion. I don't even post content on the site - the content is only accessible through the newsletter itself (or links or search, but nobody does that).
Part of me wonders how much of modern UI/UX is oversell, especially when explaining value proposition to an educated, skeptical audience. I mean look at any dime-a-dozen SaaS company - there is so much unnecessary information going on on every landing page when ultimately the goal is typically just to get someone to "Request a Demo" on the page.
Also, shameless plug to sign up yourself if you'd like.
Management tips to fire anyone who doesn't "spark joy" (https://www.techloaf.io/2019/01/17/tips-from-a-titan-tidy-yo...)
PIP'd employee claims sanctuary in lactation room (https://www.techloaf.io/2019/01/17/pipd-employee-claims-sanc...)
Here's a snippet of the final product, hidden behind the landing page. (https://us17.campaign-archive.com/home/?u=14538d8f8591165977...) There's a certain charm from the early 90's that's been lost with all these new design trends. I personally think that it has something to do with simplicity indicating that you are dealing with an individual. Not a 'faceless' company. Hence the charm. In the 90's, you were almost always interacting with a site designed by an individual. Think GeoCities/AngelFire - so this was always a given. Now much less so. Yep. Last year, I was trying lots of projects to see what worked. I made a minimalist version of YouTube but didn't want to buy a domain for a "dumb" project. I put it as a subdomain on another site then tossed it on HN. My other projects would get 2 - 5 upvotes, this got 200+ and went viral across other sites. The site was black text on white, with a button and a textbox. People really seemed to like it. Simple and effective websites are much better than clutter in confusion. I think lots of websites put lots of colors + graphics because they misunderstand other site's designs. tl;dr: Users generally dgaf about your pretty colors, design and domain as long as your site works, has good grammar and doesn't look like a virus.