Maybe you look at a SIMPLER site like https://tom.preston-werner.com/ and mistakenly equate that with a "worse" landing page. Actually though this simple page has bullet proof styling, and slapping some stock images on it like you did on your page wouldn't make it better, it would make it way worse.
Rather than looking for an external factor like a "mythical uncanny valley" to explain your landing page's poor performance, look inwards at your individual styling and what could be improved.
He had very little accent. He had obviously worked very hard to remove the accent (big job), but he still understood English as a secondary language, and sometimes had difficulty comprehending dialogue (especially in New York, where we talk quickly).
People didn’t cut him slack for the lack of comprehension, where I think they would have, if he had a stronger accent.
I also knew an Italian, who had a strong accent, but a better command of English than most native speakers. I think he deliberately played his accent up.
The impression I think is that the more polished a product or MVP looks, the more "finished" it is and therefore the more open it'll be to criticism (there's literally more of the product to criticise). This could be a good thing, since it gives you much more insight into what needs to be improved for the final product
Some pages show very clearly that the focus was not on designing a good looking appealing page, either minimal on purpose, or just a bit dated (like hackernews, or old reddit). Not bad, it's familiar, functional, fine.
Other pages are designed to do other things; for example evoke desire, excitement and/or delight (like Apple, Stripe).
Then there are pages that want to be Apple, but don't quite succeed. A lot of websites that use Bootstrap or material design are like that. It's superficial design, they have some of the styles, but it's very clear there is a lack of design, lack of storytelling, lack of substance. It's a bit cringy to look at, it evokes negative feelings.
That doesn't mean all is lost, even experienced designers often go through that phase in the design process, they just are unlikely to release it haha. Keep asking yourself questions; What do I want it to do? Why isn't it doing it right now? Why does it look off? Look at examples that do achieve what you want, what exactly is it that is different? Etc etc. And then iterate, iterate, iterate.
Design often looks simple/obvious, but it takes a lot of practice, perseverance and struggle to get good at it.
If the design appears obviously incomplete or unfinished, much critical judgement is withheld since it's assumed that whatever criticism they have will be addressed by the final design. Depending on your goal, this can be helpful or even counterproductive (maybe the finished design won't be how they assume it will be). Or others will instead focus on high-level feedback like addressing the overall theme and direction instead of the minutiae of the design.
If the design appears highly polished, then any issue, however minor, is assumed to be "finalized" and thus the criticism pours out.
If you make it appear completed, then people will assume it is in fact completed. If you're still working on it, make it look clearly unfinished.
However, no matter how much you stress it is a prototype or make it look as such, someone will still criticize the the fact it's all in black and white and all the text says "Lorem ipsum".
Can I ask - why do you think you are building a "better" landing page? If you are getting judged more harshly, doesnt that mean your pages are not actually "better"? Maybe as you are building more pages, your subjective opinion of your own designs has changed....
I've seen it a few times on MVPs launched here. Some new YC company and their flashy homepage, but when I browse the homepage I have no idea what the company actually does. The pages are clean, but the actual idea is vague...
https://t-artmagazine.com/what-is-corporate-memphis-and-why-...
> Illustrations in the style, with its aggressively friendly expressions, portray a world that is uncannily utopian.
Believe me, the site was worse a few weeks ago - or at least a lot more basic. The feedback I got from the few people I showed that site to was quite positive though. As I made what I thought were improvements though I started getting more and more negative feedback hence the observation in my original post.
True, some of what I thought were improvements probably made the site worse. The lesson I've learnt is still valid though - I should have paid someone early on in the product development stage to take care of the UI.
I will pay someone this week to do that and hopefully launch properly sometime in June. I bet when I actually do a "Show HN" with a decent looking landing page it will not garner as much interest as this has - people love picking out mistakes!
Still, a big thank you to everyone who has provided feedback. I've fixed the obvious errors. Will tackle the others when I get the chance.
A bad landing page filters out people who are just moderately interested. They'll just close the tab and move on. That's going to skew the feedback you'll get.
If you don't get (much) feedback at all you're in a much worse spot. Then you don't know if your MVP sucks, or it doesn't but your landing page sucks, or maybe both are fine but you're just not getting the right traffic. It's way harder to figure out what to do when nobody seems to care at all about what you've built.
If you think it's visually stunning without being informative or just pure information without attention-grabbing visuals, then you'll fall on either side of the hill.
Then there are other factors including your target audience, copy-test, sentiment, color combinations etc.
I've build many landing pages in my life time and I am not sure if I still get it. If you are optimizing for HN-audience, I would say it also requires a different strategy (e.g. demo first without signing up?)
edit: I noticed that at the very bottom there's a link to a demo but the demo doesn't load.
If you present pixel perfect designs for feedback, feedback is less specific because users think the product is finished. However, when it’s a pencil sketch, users become critical and critique everything because they don’t think anything is set in stone. I try to present LoFi everything until final sign off.
Find a product that has a design you want to emulate and just copy it. Copy the colors, font styles, font sizes, element spacing, drop shadows...everything. For the illustrations or other content that is copy protected, just buy something that looks similar from shutterstock or some other website. I've followed this model repeatedly.
Design is important because a polished website can make you look like you are a larger, well established company. But it's not worth your time as a founder to master design.
That being said, the design on propertysquares.com looks amateurish and makes me feel like you are small.
The colour scheme is a bit jarring.. Some odd spacing choices and no real direction of what the service does.
I'm pretty awful on my own with UI and UX, I rely heavily on others but when I'm in a pinch, I'll try find some inspiration on Behance or such. After years and years of outsourcing and studying other peoples work, I think I can notice what works and whats interesting new and what just seems off..
Its definitely a marathon and not a race so don't take this negatively. Don't be afraid to rely on other people for it!
When a non-designer makes an update, there is always something off, whether it's the font, color-scheme, or sizing that's quite apparent. I'm not a designer myself but I think I can tell when a website had a lot of effort put into the initial design but not so much on maintenance and content updates - something always seems a bit off.
If you design looks hand drawn you will get creative feedback. But if your design looks polished you will get binary (harsh) feedback.
You can see that design tools like balsamic have different renderings, exactly because of that.
The issue with your landing page is that it comes off as “designery” while at the same time not showing the polish that an actual designer would produce.
I can see that you’re trying, but it is clear that you don’t quite grasp what the intent of the design elements is supposed to be.
Making the landing page better is easy pretend work.
Making the product better is hard real work.
Good luck.