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9 Comments

Is it wrong to "copy" the design of a website?

I know that copyright does not exist on web pages, but can visitors to my site find this objectionable if they know the site in question?

For example, I really like the design of the site https://baremetrics.com/, which I find very simple and well constructed, could it backfire if i were to take the same basic structure and colors ?

I'm really not a designer and I don't really want to pay a freelance for the MVP.

  1. 2

    FYI the site you linked has a style that is pretty common these days.

    Take a look at https://nextjs.org/ which looks extremely similar, it even uses the same font (called Inter).

    So you're pretty safe, no one will really notice if you copy that styling.

  2. 2

    This aesthetic they're using in Baremetrics is pretty popular nowadays, even them might be copied from someone else.

    So if you like it, you can definitely inspire yours on theirs. Just don't blindly copy, but improve on it.

  3. 2

    If you copy it don't copy everything lol.... that website is literally useless if the user has an ad blocker like uBlock Origin (which is popular) installed.

    1. 1

      What about it doesn't work? Baremetrics is a pretty big "small" company. Everything works for me with all sorts of adblockers and user scripts on my browser and even my non-chromium based browsers?

      1. 1

        Hi, perhaps it was a temporary issue and they've fixed it because now it works. I have uBlock Origin installed and the website didn't work because more scripts etc were blocked. It doesn't seem to be happening now.

  4. 2

    I probably wouldn't- but there's so many templates out there that you can buy/use that you should just find something else that's comparable and use that.

  5. 2

    I don't know if users will find it objectionable, but flat out copying is never particularly effective from a brand standpoint. You should be striving for something unique to stand out.

    Instead of doing exactly what another site does with it's design, identify what elements and aspects make that inspiration effective and adapt that to your site to make it your own.

  6. 2

    If you are in their vertical it's probably not a "nice" thing to do.
    If you are not, some small changes can make a lot of differnce:

    Colour- change to your brand colours.
    Font
    Logo - obviously
    Etc

    Before you know it, it won't look the same anymore just by changing to your brand.

    Copying their code mind isn't something i recommened or encourage.

    Of course you could just buy a theme similar to theirs.

    1. 1

      Thank you, that's kinda what i thought too.

  7. 2

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