Why Ignoring These Website Design Basics Could Be Killing Your Online Success

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summary

In this conversation, Adam and Phill discuss the importance of starting with a clear strategy and objective when building a website for a B2B tech startup. They caution against simply imitating popular websites like Apple's, as those sites are designed for specific purposes and may not align with the goals of your business. They also advise against relying too heavily on design inspiration from platforms like Dribbble and awards websites, as they often prioritise trends over functionality. Instead, they recommend focusing on the fundamentals of good website design, such as information architecture, conversion strategy, and clear value proposition. In this conversation, Phill and Adam discuss brutalist web design and the importance of focusing on readability and functionality. They explore the guidelines for brutalist web design, such as making content readable on all screens and devices, only using hyperlinks and buttons for clicks, and ensuring that hyperlinks are underlined and buttons look like buttons. They emphasise the need for founders to start with a clear objective and a strong brand identity when building a website. They also highlight the importance of content and brand differentiation in creating a successful website.

keywords

website design, B2B tech startup, strategy, objective, imitating, Apple website, design inspiration, Dribbble, awards websites, trends, functionality, information architecture, conversion strategy, value proposition, brutalist web design, readability, functionality, guidelines, hyperlinks, buttons, brand identity, content, differentiation

takeaways

• Start with a clear strategy and objective when building a website for a B2B tech startup.
• Avoid imitating popular websites like Apple's, as they are designed for specific purposes and may not align with your business goals.
• Don't rely too heavily on design inspiration from platforms like Dribbble and awards websites, as they prioritise trends over functionality.
• Focus on the fundamentals of good website design, such as information architecture, conversion strategy, and clear value proposition. Brutalist web design focuses on readability and functionality, aiming to simplify websites and reduce distractions.
• Content should be readable on all screens and devices, and only hyperlinks and buttons should respond to clicks.
• Hyperlinks should be underlined and buttons should look like buttons to maintain an honest and transparent interaction with visitors.
• Founders should start with a clear objective and a strong brand identity when building a website.
• Differentiating the brand and creating compelling content are key factors in creating a successful website.

Creators & Guests

Host

Adam Yaya-Durrant

Co-founder of Yaya

Host

Phill Keaney-Bolland

Co-founder of Yaya

Producer

Alexandra Pointet

Producer of the Cult Products podcast

What is Cult Products?

Dive into the essentials of start-up success with Cult Products, hosted by Yaya's co-founders, Adam Yaya-Durrant and Phill Keaney-Bolland. This podcast delivers sharp insights on creating revolutionary products, radical branding, and attracting a loyal following of early adopters. Whether you're starting out or scaling up, each episode is packed with actionable advice and stories from those who've built successful businesses. Join Adam and Phill as they help you transform bold ideas into start-up success.

Phill Keaney-Bolland (00:18)
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Cult Products podcast with me, Phil Keeney -Bolland.

Adam Yaya-Durrant (00:27)
and me, Adam Yahya Durrant and to... yeah a lot of names, yeah lot of double barreling there. Sometimes we double barrel and sometimes we don't, I've noticed, I'm not sure what that's about.

Phill Keaney-Bolland (00:31)
of names between the two of us.

Sometimes I remember that I have a double -barreled name and sometimes I don't. Neither of us have always had double -barreled names. it's a pretty recent thing. A lot of it depends on if I'm filling out a form, whether I want to write all the letters in my now very long name.

Adam Yaya-Durrant (00:46)
Yes, same.

Yeah, Mine's legally changed and I do get into trouble when I don't say the whole thing by my wife.

Phill Keaney-Bolland (01:08)
Yeah. For me, you know, in the in the old days, when Facebook started, and then you would be in a relationship and you'd become like Facebook official. Do remember that? For now, the equivalent was probably like changing my name on LinkedIn to show that I got married.

Adam Yaya-Durrant (01:23)
That was, yeah.

Phill Keaney-Bolland (01:34)
Anyway, the podcast is about B2B tech startups and within that kind of brand marketing website, product, all of those things. Adam and I are both the co -founders of Yaya, a design agency that spent most of the last five or six years traveling around the world, helping lots of startup founders get their, get their businesses off the ground.

And today we're going to be talking a bit about websites and within that, what you need from a website as a B2B tech startup, why you need it and how you can create it. And we're going to be getting into some of the more practical side of things in the second half of this podcast. So,

When we chatted about this yesterday, Adam, you said that we might end up having a few arguments on this, which could make for quite an interesting episode. But we will see how we get on. So I guess a good place to start is probably, you're starting your B2B tech startup. Most people, I think, recognize that they need a website. Adam, where do you think people...

Adam Yaya-Durrant (02:31)
Yeah.

Phill Keaney-Bolland (02:53)
should start? What should be the sort of first things that they think about when it comes to a website?

Adam Yaya-Durrant (02:58)
Interesting. Well, I guess where people shouldn't start is just kind of looking at their favorite websites or things that they've kind of seen online and, and, trying to kind of imitate that. I think it's really, again, you know, we talk about a lot, but it's around the strategy and the value proposition and identifying like what actual site they actually need. I think people don't really kind of

understand that point, there's a lot of different kind of sites that have different, I guess, purposes, in terms of, you know, for example, what we kind of tag as a brochure site, which is just kind of a shop window of a site, it's just kind of showing that you exist to something that's a lot more kind of, I guess, focused on lead generation and actually selling a thing. So I think understanding the objective of the website is like, you know, the first and foremost place to start really.

because and it's surprising how many people don't know the answer to that question. And just go to kind of I like the look of something like this. we do can we do that? We'll touch upon that. I'm sure in a bit. But yeah, I think more around like what is actually the kind of functional purpose to the site is a good starting place, not just the only place. But yeah, what about you? What do you think?

Phill Keaney-Bolland (04:25)
Well, I mean, I would expand on what you said and say that really what you shouldn't do is look at the Apple website and say, I want a version of that, which I've fallen into that pitfall before. I remember the first website project that I was involved in, I literally sent the Apple website over to

Simon, who was the developer who was working on it and said, I want something that's a bit like this. And he quite rightly pushed back on that. That hasn't really gone away. I think because everybody knows that the Apple website is generally like really good and sets a lot of the kind of design standards that other people try and follow.

But yeah, you have to recognize that Apple site is designed to sell Apple products. They've made very intentional design decisions in the process of creating that site to do that thing, which may not apply to what your business does or what you're trying to sell, or the objectives of your website, to your point. And they've also spent an incredible amount of money doing it. So it is very difficult to replicate.

what makes that approach good for a much smaller budget, presumably with a much smaller team. I think that specifically is not a great starting point. Would you agree?

Adam Yaya-Durrant (05:58)
No, no, I would agree. It's a phrase we say with that one, don't we champagne taste lemonade budget. And that's kind of very, it's very aligned to that Apple site in general, and definitely the kind of classic Apple AirPods storytelling. And I think when we've, you know, fallen down that trap previously, and we have like we've tried to retrofit that kind of style of

Phill Keaney-Bolland (06:06)
you

Adam Yaya-Durrant (06:25)
experience into something that's like a SAS platform. It doesn't work. So really knowing what you're selling, and creating the right environment, and site to, to, to, to warrant that I think is, is, is paramount. That works, as you say, for something that's a nice, you know, a beautiful watch or something that's a product, something tangible that you're kind of showing and turning a story around, but not for, you know, a, kind of SAS platform or something. So yeah, we've learned.

hard way with that sometimes. But yeah, it's still, know, we still get that request at the start of a lot of projects for sure.

Phill Keaney-Bolland (07:05)
I think, I think before we move on from the Apple site, it's probably worth just unpacking why those websites are generally effective and, you know, why, why they also are expensive and time consuming and what we can learn from that. Cause I think it probably gives some structure to most of what we're going to talk about today. And, you know, the first thing is Apple's brand is, you know, it's, it's one of the most instantly recognizable. It's one of the most well -established. It's one of the most effective brands in in the world ever.

Adam Yaya-Durrant (07:10)
Hmm.

Phill Keaney-Bolland (07:35)
you know, they've put a lot of work into that, like, when I say brand in that sense, I mean, their messaging, their tone of voice, their look and feel, their understanding of who their audience is, the way they communicate, what they do consistently, whether that's in adverts websites, know, every element of their product, it's super, super consistent. Like that is, you know, the first thing when they create products, they, you know, they very

well understand this process of creating demand for them and, you know, in a lot of cases, getting their products kind of to have this almost oversubscribed demand before they even launch. And the website is a part of that broader marketing strategy. you know, understanding what strategy is and what the role of the website is within that.

And then, you they have all these beautiful photographs and videos that are like super high production values, but also they have, you know, some of the world's top creative teams thinking about what, you know, should, should be the content of those. So, you know, they're, constantly trying to push things within their brand and bring things to life in really exciting ways. They get it wrong. And they've gotten it wrong quite recently with that, you know, smashing everything into an iPad.

thing that they did, but you know that they're taking risks and when you take risks, there's always going to be the potential for things, things to go wrong. And then the site user experience itself is actually is generally speaking pretty feels quite simple and very intuitive. It's not, it's, you know, there are animations and things in it, but they serve a real purpose. It's, it's not a particularly busy site. Generally. It's quite, there's quite good sort of visual hierarchy and you know, where you

have content that content is supported by the right media to make that really impactful. And of course it is developed and and and built you know to the kind highest standards imaginable. So when you just look at the end result of that and say I like the apple so I want something like that you're really just looking at the tip of an iceberg and all of those things sit beneath that and all of those things take time effort and money to

to make happen. when you just buy a template that, and you can do this because once the AirPod site or the Mac Pro site exists, people immediately copy it and rebuild it in a Webflow template or whatever it is, you're just buying the tip of the iceberg and then trying to retrofit it to your business. Because you haven't got the base of the iceberg in place.

It may look like the Apple site, but it's never going to be as good or as effective as the Apple site.

Adam Yaya-Durrant (10:24)
Yeah. Yeah, that's a really great point. I think also just to kind of finish up on the Apple stuff, as you touched on, you know, the way that they kind of use animation and use those kind of transitional effects is so well considered. And there's also different layers to that site. You you get into the kind of the richer, more experience led stuff, but then you have more of like the functional kind of elements where there's like this really minimal to know.

animation. really, they've, you know, years and years of kind of crafting that and a lot of investment and a lot of time to get that kind of balance right. So as you say, if you're just showing the tip of the iceberg, you know, you're not considering all those other kind of elements that make that site so kind of good and so well designed. So yeah. I was gonna ask you a question just to kind of like talk about we're talking in around like, you know,

a lot of people do default to looking at things and getting that their inspiration from them is obviously a lot of inspiration and a lot of resource around more more than ever and websites Pinterest and a lot of websites for for design inspiration and to get ideas for for your website like dribble and awards what's your kind of view on on those things because obviously they have a huge impact in terms of like trends and

and what's kind of the latest styling and insight design and brand but what's your thoughts on that because we talk about this a lot that it has quite a lot of hindrance on things as well.

Phill Keaney-Bolland (12:06)
Yeah. So I think the starting point for anybody's thinking about building websites, as he said, should really be what are you trying to achieve with the website? And when you are starting a B2B tech startup, just to make this as sort of, you know, easy, and uncomplicated as possible.

I think that there are probably three different types of website that you could build. it depends on the first is, and we're actually going to be joined by somebody next week. We're going to do a whole episode on this. The first thing that you should do is you should build a site that is actually designed to create a waiting list and that is designed to test demand for your product and test your

value proposition, and that should be something that you can build quickly. It should be very simple, probably a one page site, mainly focused on lead capture and what your value proposition is. And it should be something that you can support with advertising to drive traffic towards it or social media, whatever those kinds of things is.

And really you need to kind of validate the value proposition that way before you start to invest in a bigger website. You're not going to see a lot of those kinds of sites on places like Dribbble and Awards because they're not the kind of things that attract that kind of attention. They have a specific purpose. They need to be pretty simple. And actually there's plenty of tools out there that founders can use to just go and create those things pretty...

pretty easily. When you're creating something like that, really what you should be thinking about is that objective of capturing leads and building a waiting list. What's the best practice to be able to do that? What are the established design patterns? By design patterns, we mean the existing pieces of user experience and user interface design that have been proven over time using data to effectively convert people.

you'll notice at no point have I, have I mentioned going on Dribbble and looking at those kinds of things. then the sort of second and third types of sites, these are, these are kind of same. These are like basically your next site. So once you've proved your value proposition and you know, you've decided that this is the idea that you're going to back, you have to bring that to life in a website. within this sort of B2B world, you've got this sort of high value, relatively lower volume SaaS platform.

type stuff. These are things with quite high cost licenses that you need a sales team to negotiate with people. And then you've got the other side of this, is that higher volume self -serve stuff. People can buy it from a website and let's think about things like Slack in that kind of bucket, for example, Zoom, Loom, all those types of things. You need slightly different websites.

for both of those, but they both can follow pretty pre -existing design patterns. And there are nuances and there are complexities, and that's where we come in and do kind of bespoke design, where you're really kind of optimizing for the specific business that you are and your specific objectives. But there are also a load of pre -existing templates out there that follow the...

best practice design patterns. In reality, for most SaaS businesses, the type of site you're gonna need is gonna need a home page and about as a contact does page, some pages on specific use cases and features and some pages probably on the industries that you serve. For those kind higher volume things, it's gonna be more like download the app, sign up, that kind of funnel, here are the key features, et cetera. Both of those things,

you can actually go and you can get a decent template for them and you can work with that as a base and then optimize. And if you don't have the budget to go out and hire a design agency, I'd kind of suggest that's what you do. Again, I not at any point mention going on awards and going on Dribbble. So to answer your original question, I feel pretty strongly that looking at those kind of like whizzy things first,

Adam Yaya-Durrant (16:43)
Heh.

Phill Keaney-Bolland (16:50)
is the wrong approach. The right approach is to understand what it is that you're trying to do, which of those three websites you need, and then find a template that forgetting about, you know, the, the kind of aesthetic layer for a second, functionally achieves that objective really, really well. And then, and this I think is, you know,

a key point, the thing that differentiates you if everybody's using basically the same patterns and the same information architecture and all of those kinds of things, it's the brand that differentiates you and it's the content that differentiates you on the site. So that's the stuff that you really need to think about and how that brand, you know, lifts and differentiates and how that content clearly connects with your audience. So if

It's basically, you've got two options here. Either you go down this sort of Dribbble or awards route and you look at things that are like really flashy, or you do the more strategic thing. And actually looking at the more flashy stuff is basically the same as just looking at the Apple website and all the same inherent problems are linked to that approach.

Adam Yaya-Durrant (18:05)
It's also like a kind of practical element to it as well, right? You know, creating something flashy is expensive and it's like massive time sap. So, you know, we always, we talked about this in previous pods around kind of just iterating and, the kind of, you know, the hurdles of, of design. And that's, that's how you think about the end thing might end up being something quite flashy and quite kind of innovative, but the first thing shouldn't be, it should be simple.

It should be something that can be put out there quickly and then perfected over time. And there's nothing worse than just getting stuck at the first hurdle because you're trying to create the thing that's a year down the line. And we've been in that situation and seen that firsthand. So it's just a painful...

an expensive mistake to make in our opinion.

Phill Keaney-Bolland (19:06)
Have you ever, do you know any designers who post on Dribbble?

Adam Yaya-Durrant (19:11)
You know what? No, I really, really don't like dribble. I think there's a lot of reasons why I find it a really bad influence on design. It's the kind of the dribble ization of everything is a real thing because it only deals a couple of things. It's very trend based. So essentially people are following trends because they know that they're popular.

hence they'll get likes. So that kind of builds out a more of this kind of domino effect of people just kind of copying and following suit and this homogenization of design styles just starts building. Also, obviously the kind of biggest one is that they're all just like snippets of UI, they're not actually practical things that are real world. So again, you know,

Phill Keaney-Bolland (20:03)
Mmm.

Adam Yaya-Durrant (20:07)
can sometimes be useful for inspiration, but generally speaking, they're just things that look nice, but don't actually have any kind of value in terms of being functionally any good. And I think people just get led by them. I definitely feel that there's an arc with things like Dribbble, like Discover. Take for example, we talked about before, like characters and illustrations being used for SaaS platforms, like that kind of thing that happened, I guess, 10 years ago. Dribbble went mad.

everything on Dribbble technology driven was like illustrations based and then it kind of goes from that to to then into like graphic templates like shutterstock and then it just gets fully homogenized and that's kind of how it how that kind of works with those kind of places. Yeah.

Phill Keaney-Bolland (20:53)
So just to, for listeners who maybe don't know Dribbble is, I guess, like kind of a social network for designers where you can post things that probably not things that you've been working on, honestly, because they tend to be, as Adam said, you know, not really linked to any specific objective or use case, but, you know, things that people, guess, design for Dribbble to get Dribbble likes.

Adam Yaya-Durrant (21:01)
think so.

Phill Keaney-Bolland (21:22)
And it is also, you know, and when we talk about awards, that's the sort of website, I guess, like review body that kind of says, here, you know, here's the nice looking sites that are kind of bang on trend at the minute. I don't think and a lot of people do start their kind of investigation into, know, inspiration for websites by by looking at those things. I don't think I've ever met any designer

who I've worked with, who's ever posted anything on Dribbble, or at least hasn't posted on there since they stopped being a student. And I think that in itself says something about the type of things that you'll find on there.

Adam Yaya-Durrant (21:52)
No.

Yeah.

Definitely, definitely. It's like a student like sandbox, isn't it? For just kind of posting flashy stuff that's going to get kind of clicks and just following trends. Yeah, I think it serves a purpose, but it's just not a good place for anyone who's starting a business to look. Awards, I'd say, is a little bit more, it serves a different purpose. I think it's almost like a sandbox for engineers to...

to see how they can push like engineering in in digital design. So I think it has it has it has a place. Again, as our points at the start, people do get a bit too fixated on stuff there. But I can definitely you can definitely see how if you imagine like, that's, you know, awards are where the concepts are. But the reality of like, some of those concepts actually being a practical thing. And it doesn't doesn't always marry up but

some of the things that have been kind of developed within that kind of pushing of engineering of different kind of animation styles or whatever does kind of drip into kind of modern day websites, I think. So I think it has a place to just, as we said, just don't be kind of, don't be suckered into the bright and shiny things. Nice to look at.

Phill Keaney-Bolland (23:24)
I agree. mean, I mean, yes, I think, I think not all, not all websites that win awards are bad websites. you know, and, sometimes, you know, you've got things that are like that they exist to push the boundaries of what's possible in web design and web development. And that's cool. So there are good websites on there and there are things that are rightly recognized by, by awards, but using awards, like assuming that winning a

an award on awards means that it's a good site is the wrong way of thinking about those things. Because actually, lots of the stuff that makes a good website, particularly in a in bcb tech startup space isn't isn't going to awards, you know, it's, it's what one of our colleagues used to sort of call that brilliant basics, you know, it's things like having good information architecture that having

you know, a successful conversion strategy, having content and value proposition so clearly expressed, all of those kinds of things, which frankly are not that exciting to the judges of awards. Now, I think there's a problem within design, which is that if you are a designer who's unable to articulate what information architecture means, I don't think you're a designer.

Adam Yaya-Durrant (24:29)
Yeah.

Phill Keaney-Bolland (24:47)
I don't think you can design a good website unless you can think about the base of the iceberg, because all you end up doing is looking at places where they have, you these are the top 10 web trends of 2024 or, you know, awards or dribble or wherever those kinds of things is, and then just trying to replicate it because you like it as a designer and like it looks nice.

And I think that becomes a sort of vicious cycle where websites deviate more and more and more from what they actually need to do and more and more towards these sort of art projects for designers who really aren't linked to the actual strategy and objectives of what the site's there to do. And then you end up with sites that don't achieve the objectives that they're there to do. And that, think, is a crying shame because...

they're an integral part of your business. In some cases, they are the main source of revenue for your business. And if you've designed something that meets the 2024 website trends, but doesn't convert people. And some of these trends are kind of nonsensical. They'll be like, you'll see low contrast text, which is hard to read. You'll see ways of styling links that means that they don't look like links. You'll have buttons that don't have enough contrast, so they're not strong.

Adam Yaya-Durrant (25:51)
You

Phill Keaney-Bolland (26:07)
course to action, text that's unreadable because it's scrolling and whizzing around all over the place, a million animations that are distracting from reading the content, things that if I suppose if you step back and you don't actually focus on anything that the site's trying to do, they do look nice. But there's an element to which they actually detract from what you're trying to achieve with the website.

Adam Yaya-Durrant (26:35)
Well, the good news is that it is a trend, but the trend for 2025 is hyper minimalism and, and brutalism. So that would be a lot more, maybe come full circle to the websites of old, maybe websites like we'll just start looking like Craigslist and just be completely stripped out and just very super accessible. but yeah. Okay, cool. think, yeah, go on.

Phill Keaney-Bolland (26:55)
Yes.

Good place to stop there, I think. When we come back, let's get into a little bit about what we mean by brutalism and where we think you should be focusing when you're building a website.

Adam Yaya-Durrant (27:03)
Yeah.

Phill Keaney-Bolland (27:18)
Okay, welcome back. We're still talking about websites and Adam, I wanted to kick off this section talking about brutalist web design, which before people switch off, we're not going to get into too much of a kind of art conversation here. But I think what's interesting is this is a reaction to a lot of the websites that are out there.

that we've spoken about that are really busy and are really distracting. Particularly that distracting point I think is important and the functional points. And an attempt to get back to what makes websites, I was gonna say what makes websites great again. There's a better way of phrasing that I'm sure. But I wanted to just read to you this website.

Adam Yaya-Durrant (28:01)
gosh. shatter.

Phill Keaney-Bolland (28:14)
which has the guidelines for brutalist web design on it and get your thoughts on this. So firstly, because this is a podcast, just to describe that site to you, it's got a gray background, it's got black text on it, it all looks fairly like, I'm guessing it's Helvetica. All of the links, the text links are in that kind of blue, like generic hyperlink.

color and in a serif font. So immediately, you what you were saying about Craig's list, you're kind of in that kind of space. The headline is guidelines for brutalist web design, raw content true to its construction. There's a lot of text on this and very, very few images. These are the things that are in the detailed guidelines section. So number one, content is readable on all reasonable screens.

Adam Yaya-Durrant (28:52)
Hmm.

Phill Keaney-Bolland (29:13)
and devices. That I think is pretty much universally accepted as being important, pretty non -controversial. But they actually go in and say, by default, a website that uses HTML as intended and has no custom styling will be readable on all screens and devices. Only the act of design can make the content less readable, though it can certainly make it more readable.

Adam Yaya-Durrant (29:44)
Hmm? Yeah.

Phill Keaney-Bolland (29:44)
interesting there, isn't it? Because, know, that is true. So if you think about that generic raw HTML that looks like a word document, effectively, it starts off being really readable. And then you can make design choices that either enhance that or wreck it. And I think what it's saying there is, don't make bad decisions, basically.

Adam Yaya-Durrant (29:52)
Thanks, you man.

probably because more times people do right and that at the moment and it's becoming an issue. like, yeah, you can definitely see the logic there. It's interesting, isn't it? What else you got?

Phill Keaney-Bolland (30:21)
I think what's interesting about this is also interesting about this next point. only hyperlinks and buttons respond to clicks.

Adam Yaya-Durrant (30:31)
Hmm.

Phill Keaney-Bolland (30:32)
A website is a hypertext document that allows for two primary forms of interaction, navigating a link to another location and submitting information back to a server. These functions are performed respectively by hyperlinks and buttons.

this is, this is, this is interesting. So, I suppose the default again is that you don't have loads of stuff that you can click on on a website. when, and I think what, what both of these things are saying is you sort of start off with an uncomplicated things and can then choose to make it more complicated. So you can add in more, more things to click on. Let me, let me do the third one and then.

we'll review this. Hyperlinks are underlined and buttons look like buttons.

pretty easy. As mentioned when discussing clicks, only hyperlinks and buttons should respond to clicks since this maintains an honest and transparent interaction with a visitor. To maintain a truth to materials, it follows that the appearance of these elements should also be honest and clear. I think you'll like this one.

Adam Yaya-Durrant (31:29)
Yeah.

Phill Keaney-Bolland (31:48)
Hyperlink has no analog in the real world. Since the dawn of the web, convention dictates a hyperlink using underline to reveal its existence, which is a wonderful solution since underlining has no place in modern type setting.

Adam Yaya-Durrant (32:03)
punchy. Do you know? I'd like to see that we did. Well, I'm visualizing when you're saying that it's kind of like, and luckily we were, we were our age means that we were kind of born at the time, the early days of the internet. But I'm seeing like in Carter 97, like going even when there wasn't any internet, and it was really like, you know, text, because that was a CD, wasn't it wasn't even, you know, and

Phill Keaney-Bolland (32:05)
Interesting. Okay, give me your thoughts.

CD -ROM. CD -ROM. I don't know what the ROM bit means.

Adam Yaya-Durrant (32:32)
And, and, and a CD -ROM, does anyone know what that is? Yeah, what is the CD -ROM? But in Carter 97, and that was very like, you know, text, hyperlink was a hyperlink and a button was a button. And I think that is as much interaction that you'd have. I do think like, you know, this is exactly like, you know, like, like the term brutalist that was a movement born out of kind of frustration of, of things. And I think this is

This is also like showing that I think there's going to be some interesting stuff because I think you're going to see a lot more stripped back websites with typography being a lot more the focus. You know, contrast being high, and just things being a lot lighter. think we've got kind of the internet's cluttered and it's time to kind of basically strip it back and get it back to its kind of core essence. So I like that stuff in there. think it's

Phill Keaney-Bolland (33:27)
So.

Adam Yaya-Durrant (33:30)
It's kind of funny, it's like when we, you know, the dawn of the internet was like that, wasn't it?

Phill Keaney-Bolland (33:36)
Well, yeah. And I, when I read this, was, I was struck by a couple of different things. The first being, yeah, webs, websites, websites being hypertext documents is interesting. Like, if you think about it, a website is a, is a very like extreme form of words document. Ultimately, you know, if if, if you think about it, you could take word and you could write a bunch of stuff. You could put a bunch of images in there. could put a bunch of

Adam Yaya-Durrant (33:49)
Mm.

Phill Keaney-Bolland (34:05)
videos in there, and you'd have content in a format that was very accessible and very readable. So that first of all is an interesting mindset, because I think we probably don't think about websites all the time in that way. We think about them as experiences and things like that. And they are, they ultimately become that through the design and build process. But they start off as effectively...

Word documents. The second thing is that the way that the internet is built, the way that web websites work is they start off being very accessible and user friendly and become less user friendly or more user friendly based off the decisions that you make as a designer, which that that is interesting, I think. Because I would suggest that in a lot of cases, they become actually less less user friendly.

Adam Yaya-Durrant (34:35)
Mm.

Phill Keaney-Bolland (35:03)
so that, so that's interesting things like, you know, hyperlinks are underlined and buttons look like buttons. sounds super obvious, but I would say I've, I've seen a diminishing amount of hyperlinks with, with underlines on them because probably doesn't look as nice. But then I also get frustrated just like, I didn't realize that was a link or that, know, it's, it's a subtly different color from the rest of the text, but,

Adam Yaya-Durrant (35:04)
Mm.

Phill Keaney-Bolland (35:33)
it's not as obvious as it could be, which is kind of like bad design. Buttons, think, you can see kind of crazy designs for buttons, but I think people generally know that that's quite bad practice and don't really do that. But even on our own site, we had an instance where there was a button, but it was so low contrast from what it sat on. And this was actually on the contactors.

Adam Yaya-Durrant (35:49)
Yes.

Phill Keaney-Bolland (36:02)
button on our website that we didn't see anybody click on it. we, we, from the moment we changed it, we started to see more people click on it. And, and, you know, there's, there's a mindset there, which is like, well, it will look nicer if it's lower contrast and it's more subtle, but there's a functional need for it to be more high contrast. So anyway, the, the, the upshot of all this and why I think this is important to the founders who are listening to this. I actually think.

the starting with a word document and building your website out from that is a very achievable way for a founder to build a good functional website. And it's not actually the first thing I'd suggest that people do. think that is more about the strategy and objectives and those kinds of things. But if you designed a website by starting with a word document,

writing out what you want to communicate to people, and then figuring out the places within that content where you need to draw attention to something or illustrate it with richer media is a, and that's in line with these brutalist principles, is a better way than starting with, you know, a

Okay, well, we need to have lots of animations, or we need to have lots of images and we have lots of headings and things that are whizzing around all over the place. And I think actually that for a founder is, it's very doable. Most people know how to use Microsoft Word. If we talk about the design tools people should use when they're building a website as a B2B tech startup, I would suggest that.

isn't going to come up in a lot of conversations, but I think it should.

Adam Yaya-Durrant (38:04)
Yeah, think founders are in the best place than ever really now to be able to kind of own, be able to do this themselves. And, you know, I think we've almost kind of reverted back from doing content for websites within like, wireframes and you do need to do that, but it's kind of easier almost to do the structure of the content on a piece of paper.

And India can actually really kind of then have a real structure to it rather than getting kind of distracted by the design of the site. And I think that's where we've found issues before because you're trying to retrofit stuff to fit the design rather than the content leading the design as it should be, which is one of the biggest kind of traps you can fall in. And I think now there's so many tools and like things that we're going to touch on the set that can help.

founders build sites if they have like the content and they know what the site's objective is and they know what the understand the value proposition that it's kind of it's a great time to not have design skills but be able to build websites because that stuff is just getting like really, really powerful and really and really easy for people to just pick up who don't have design experiences. And Phil and I talk about this a lot like the programs of the futures like

figmas and square spaces and all this, not gonna, they're not gonna, they were originally designed for designers, like people who understand like that kind of side of thing and worked in Adobe platforms and X, Y, Z. They're gonna all be designed just for normal people who are picking, they're picking up for the first time. And that's kind of the future of these, these platforms. So all they're going to be doing is investing more and more in AI and things and tools that are gonna

only kind of support that journey really.

Phill Keaney-Bolland (39:58)
Mmm.

I think, I think this is a really important point is that when we talk about this stuff today, we're talking about ways that founders can do these things. We're not talking about ways we'd expect designers to work. You know, it is, there, there is going to be a difference in approach based on the fact that you have that background in design. have certain capabilities, experiences and things that, know, you're, you're sort of average person off the street. Doesn't, doesn't have, but because of all those innovations, it's much more easy now for those kinds of people.

Adam Yaya-Durrant (40:11)
Mm.

Phill Keaney-Bolland (40:30)
to do something that is really to a very high standard. And I think the more that we can frame that conversation around things that people are already familiar with, I mentioned Microsoft Word, the other thing I'd say is that Microsoft PowerPoint or Google Slides or whatever people use, the website in a sense is quite similar to creating a great presentation. So if you start in...

a slide design environment, you start thinking about the slide design or more likely you start with the template that the product gives you and then start trying to fill in the boxes. If you start with a piece of paper and you start to storyboard out your presentation and your narrative and the content that you need to bring that narrative to life, or you do that in Word or whatever, before you move it into PowerPoint, you're going to actually end up

probably with a stronger narrative and content that's more effective. So, you know, I think when we think about, let's get into this, how would we actually create a website as a founder and what tools make that possible? I think first off, very clearly define the objective of what the site is and...

where it sits within the strategy of your business, the marketing strategy in particular of the business. And once you have that, putting some KPIs against that, I think is a good idea. You know, if you're saying it's got to contribute to revenue, but be specific, is that it's got to convert a certain number of leads? You know, is it about

you when you're having sales conversations, it's, you they, you, you can have a sense that they've been on the website, you know, whatever, whatever those kinds of things are, linking, linking those back to the objectives before you start actually designing, I think is a good space to be in. Once you have that, the other thing that you need is, is actually brand.

and, and clarity on, what your, what your value proposition is. And the reason that's so important is, you know, we mentioned this in the first half. A lot of people are going to end up with basically the same website structure, especially if, you follow this process that we're about to articulate and the things that will make it successful. They are, are you able to.

communicate what you do in a way that's compelling to your market and get them interested? And does the actual brand design of the site look professional? Does it convey the meaning that you want to get across? it make you look like a real company? it make it look like you've, you know, you've considered those things? Is it appealing to your target market? And Adam, we, you know, we often get asked,

you know, can you help? We need, we need a new website. And I suppose it's kind of obvious to us looking at it that yes, you know, I mean, some, some sites are just bad, but they're just, badly organized. They've ignored all the kind of rules and patterns and things, and they've ended up in a place where they're basically unusable. Most of the time that isn't the issue. Most of the time, the issue is that the content on the site is too long and doesn't make sense. And there's no

there is no brand or there's a very generic, you know, off the shelf brand that means that the website doesn't, you know, doesn't, doesn't really convey any sense of meaning or doesn't, you know, isn't just, isn't, isn't really effective. And that actually the way to get the website to a place where it functions well and, know, and it's better than where it is and make a step change requires you to go back and actually either evolve or totally rebrand.

Adam Yaya-Durrant (44:46)
Yeah, I mean, it's one of our kind of biggest things, isn't it? And one that people don't really fully kind of understand. you know, it's sometimes we know, like we can we can create a probably a nicer website that's more robust and is easier for them to use as a user. But essentially, we can't really make that kind of step change that they're looking for. And you can't do that unless you have those kind of

the ingredients of the brand really kind of cemented and then kind of communicated through the next website. a lot of the time it's kind of a bit of a tricky conversation really because they're looking for a website update, but actually what they need is a bit more fundamental and they need the foundations of the value proposition and the brand to be kind of reworked. So yeah, it's something that we come across all the time really. So

And I think also what you were saying about, you know, the process that we're talking about and enabling founders to set up their own, create their own templates, essentially, is great because it gives people that kind of ownership and they can do stuff relatively quickly. have to invest in design agencies to do that. But essentially, you're there's going to be that those templates are all going to look the same and, you know, not to kind of just beat the same

point again, but that is where the content and the brand really needs to come through to stand out. So I guess essentially what we're saying is these are great tools, you should use them. But bear in mind that like what you're saying is really important and how you're saying it and communicating it is, is, is, is also extremely important to stand out.

Phill Keaney-Bolland (46:37)
And the reason that they all look the same, there's good reasons for that. We're in the later stages of design, especially website, both mobile and desktop design. And we've got years and years of data on what works.

when you you'd be redesigning the wheel essentially if you said look we're going to do something that's completely different the type of information we're going to have is going to be you know very satiric we're going to have these you know crazy crazy experiences even down to granular things like buttons like buttons look like buttons because everybody knows what button is they know what they they know what it signifies they know what affordances it has all that kind of stuff like if you click on a button you know what's going to that isn't going to change

massively until the format that these things appear on changes and we get into more, you know, potentially spatial metaversy stuff or, you know, AI, obviously that have very, very different ways of interacting with information and technology that might not involve any sort of screen at all, you know, those kinds of things.

Adam Yaya-Durrant (47:54)
you

Phill Keaney-Bolland (47:57)
Until that happens, we're going to be operating where we're making marginal gains on the design side of things, but the biggest impact comes from content and brand. I think if you start a startup, what a lot of people do is they, I don't know if it's like logos .com or what, but you can kind of muddle something together.

Adam Yaya-Durrant (48:22)
Mm

Phill Keaney-Bolland (48:27)
for either a very, very low cost that probably has like a logo, some colors and like a bit of type and kind of call that a brand or you can just go and pull something off the shelf and customize it. That has a purpose, it's really obvious when you look at a website where that's all they've done around brand because it's very, very surface level.

it can look very generic and there are lots of tropes that, you know, a lot of, a lot of startups share, that are particularly apparent on a website. There's a, there's a level of depth below that, that you have to go to, to genuinely differentiate and, just to put that in kind of, you know, obvious terms, if you're just going to the same marketplace as everyone else's and getting the same brand as everyone else, that like, isn't differentiation that, that is, literally just buying into the...

Adam Yaya-Durrant (49:26)
Hmm.

Phill Keaney-Bolland (49:26)
you know, the crowd. And when, you know, when, the structure of the site is going to rightly need to be quite similar to what everyone else is doing, that approach of non -differentiation around brand doesn't work.

Okay, so we've sort of covered the first two steps, I think, in the process of creating a website. You've got your objectives, you've got some KPIs, and we've got numerous other podcasts where we're talking about brand and value propositions and things like that. Those are the sort of, they're the fundamental...

sort of strategic elements behind the website, which really take what it ends up looking like. We're gonna take a break there. And in the next episode, we're gonna talk about how you actually bring that to life and what some of the tools are. Adam and I have been playing around with some of the kind of latest AI tools. We've got a full review of those things. So stick around to get more into the practical side of things.

But until then, you can find us and download our AI prototyping toolkit at cultproducts .yaya .co. Please like and subscribe to this podcast if you've enjoyed it and share it with your friends if you think they'd be interested as well. And I think that's it for us this week. think we're done. So thanks very much, Adam.

Adam Yaya-Durrant (51:03)
Thanks Phil.

Phill Keaney-Bolland (51:04)
great chatting to you as always and we will see you all next week.

Adam Yaya-Durrant (51:10)
See you guys.