Making a site that stands out

When people come visit your website you don't want them to think: "Hey, this looks like every other website I've seen." Otherwise, they're not going to remember you when they come back and they're not going to become a loyal subscriber.

I recently had the opportunity to chat with @csallen about building indie hackers. Here's a few snippets on site design from our conversation:

Why the indie hackers design is memorable

I saw all the other blogs were white with black text. I made indie hackers dark blue with white text. Instead of making the homepage look like a blog, I created a different square with a bright icon for every single different interview that I did. Just so when you came back to the site, it would instantly stand out as something that was memorable to you.

A rough design can be better than a slick one

I think the worst thing you can do if you're not great at design is try to make a super slick design cause then it's just gonna look inferior to everybody else's.

Honestly, maybe just make a really rough, shoddy website that looks like it's not professionally designed and embrace it. And even call it out and talk about it.

You can just say: Hey, screw it. I'm going to be like Dan Luu and have a minimally designed blog. I'm literally not going to have any styles whatsoever. I'm just going to type, and that's an entire set of responsibilities that's no longer in your way.

Maybe you don't need a site at all

@joelhooks, for example, runs a website called egghead . . . . when he first built egghead, like he didn't even have a website . . . . He found a guy who had been producing some really great developer content on YouTube. He formed a partnership with them and said, Hey, can I package these all into a zip file? And send them an email to your list and, you know, charge people for it?

He knew that because his target audience was developers, like he didn't need a sleek website. Developers don't care that much about the glitz and the glamour. They just want the thing, right? They're more than happy to get a zip file with a bunch of educational videos in them.

Getting better at design

If you do want to become a good designer. My advice is practice. . . . practice designing a hundred websites. Pay attention to why yours looks worse than others. Go on dribbble, look up some good designs. Try to recreate them from memory and after you put in some reps, it doesn't matter if you have a naturally good eye for design, you'll get better. . . . Intuition is something that you develop through repeated experience and practice.

Want more?

If you enjoyed these insights from Courtland you can check out the full episode and transcript here.

How did you make your site stand out?