Critiquing Startup Websites With Webflow CEO

Hi, I'm Aaron, group partner at YC, and welcome to another episode of design review. [Music] Today, we've got a special episode; we are coming at you from the Webflow offices, and I'm joined today by Vlad, co-founder and CEO of Webflow. Welcome, everyone! Thank you, very excited! Thank you for hosting.

So today, we're actually going to be hosting. Is that a website hosting? Punch, you're welcome for hosting! So today, we are going to be reviewing websites that were specifically built in Webflow. Hopefully, this will give you a good sense of what's possible with Webflow and also some of the pros and cons of building really amazing landing pages. Obviously, Vlad has seen millions of these things, so together we are going to give a lot of design feedback that will hopefully be useful to all of you.

Let's jump into the first website. So the first one we have here is Oda Studio: "Stand out with your property photos." Let's see... Property Management and marketplaces. This makes me think it's something about photos for Airbnbs or rental properties or something—pretty much anywhere you might need it because it's, you know, property managers, marketplaces, home builders... it could be a generic property photo service that you can feed into anything.

Yeah, so is this software? Do they send photographers to your place to take the photo? That's not immediately clear to me here. Upgrade and organize... so it's like photo management—basically an asset management tool that you can put into other places, image enhancements and labeling, customize the home buying journey. I think the tagline "Stand out with your property photos" kind of—it's probably a little too broad.

Yeah, I think we're both struggling here to figure out exactly what this is. A lot of times for your website, you want to be focused on communicating what it is first and foremost. Then the user that hits the site wants to know if this is for them. I think they do a good job of the "is it for me" because if I have a property that I need to take photos of, I feel like, "Oh, this is interesting," but it's not clear to me exactly what they do with those photos.

Alright, let's see. So buying up 40 businesses, a million photos. So here's an example. Okay, so now I'm thinking this looks like software to make the photos look better. Oh, interesting... it's the same exact one? No, it looks like—oh, I think it might be—oh, you're right! So it's an augmented photo.

If you go to the next... see the next one; it's a good use of a slider. Okay, it does look like the exact same framing. It's not like somebody came in—oh no, like the clouds are different, so it might just be this is taken by a non-pro and this is taken by a pro, potentially. I'm not sure if the staging is done manually. Yeah, I wonder if this is software staging, where you take crappy photos of an empty room and then upload it to their software and they make it look like a well-lit, well-furnished, and designed room—that would be my guess.

So website-wise, they're really missing out on an opportunity to communicate some of this stuff more clearly. It's especially since it says "product example." Is the product the photo itself, or the management? It's not clear; it's very generic. Just saying "product example." They should say like, "Here's how our software automatically adds furniture, or enhances the quality of the photo, or adds a crazy sky."

Apparently, start for free, probably goes to a sign-up experience. Yep. And then it's a little hard to tell what... professional quality property photos—no pro required. Okay, oh, here we go. Okay, this is a little better. What page is this? How did you get to it? So I clicked on from the home page; it looks like based on the URL that's popping up here, these go to different user personas that might use their software. So I clicked on property manager, and then it looks like down here—why use Oda Studio smart enhancements versus... this is where they should be on the average.

Yes, yeah, this is what we're looking for. And maybe, you know, sometimes I see this work well if you're buying ads or you have certain landing pages that are targeting certain users, then this can work well to have it here. But for anybody who hits your homepage directly, it's not going to be clear to them. This page goes a much longer way toward communicating what the software actually is.

Just by pairing the same exact slider, you see a before and after photo—that's the same photo, and the value prop, or what it actually is: premium virtual staging. I mean, I'm not a property manager, but I can immediately connect, "Okay, I can see how this is a solution for me," especially if you can communicate how your product is gonna help them get more rent, or list it faster, find a renter faster. That's actually going to go a long way, because instead of just talking about specific benefits, you're actually talking about the value that you can provide, which is like make more money, get your listings rented faster with this. That's probably the benefit that I would focus on.

One thing I do like about this site is just it's really straightforward in the design; it's pretty simple. It's um, no frills, no, you know, egregious animation. I think that what really needs work is the content to make sure that it really is more clear what they do and what the product is.

Yeah, there's good stuff here. I think we get it now; it just took a while. So, yeah, it seems like further down the page is the really valuable stuff, and that should be pulled up a lot higher. Things like Oda Studio by the numbers, like I don't even have context to know what they do at this point, and so that can go. That's probably a social proof attempt, and social proof can go way down. But I think you're right; it could do a little polishing on what exactly this is and who it's for.

Cool! Well, founders of Oda Studio, it sounds like there's a lot of room for improvement to be able to just add more clarity around specifically what you do, and I think that's going to go a long way to attracting the type of customers that you're looking for.

Okay, let's try the next one. We got Flycode here: "We free developers from product edits." So I'm guessing product edits as in product managers saying, "I want this edit?" Yeah, product designers, and, "Hey, I have this new update in Figma." Yeah, so product people ourselves, we know that feeling of tapping on an engineer’s shoulder and saying, "Hey, can you change this code or do this thing?" and they're like, "That's like the 100th thing on my to-do list, and I don't really want to work on that right now." So this, I assume, lets non-technical people—because it says no code here—helps the product name edits help product teams work with software engineers to ship their products faster with no code.

Alright, I can... I'm curious to how it works, but I'm intrigued. This is—I'm a little confused at the animation that happened here. If three minutes means like it's a three-minute setup? I guess, yeah, if you connect your code, three minutes from now you can have like this no-code solution for product folks. And the thing I noticed while the page loaded, there was an animation, so it kind of takes your eyes there right away. Yeah, and maybe it distracts from what you really want them to read first.

That's a great point. Anytime you have animations and you have things that are moving on the page, that always draws the viewer's eye. And so it's a good idea to use that when you're trying to highlight something that you want to make sure that somebody pays attention to first. But if you're doing it for something that's not the main thing, you can be distracting from the main thing that you actually want somebody to focus on.

Yeah, it looks like what they're trying to do is cram all the key information up at the top as close to above the fold as they can. I think actually a lot of users are comfortable scrolling, and so I would think about it as unveiling different layers of the onion for what you want to communicate. And so I think they did a good job of communicating to us exactly what the product does here, assuming we're correct about it. And then down here, I think they’re trying to communicate too many things instead. I think we maybe need a little bit more information—kind of your point about the three-minute thing—like what is it? How specifically does it work at this point?

Alright, so let's see what we got when we scroll down. "Make product changes without coding." I think that's one of the other things is, when you’re designing your page, the headlines are the things that are really going to stand out to people. So we hit this, we read this headline, we read the sub-headline because it's up at the top, and then we spent a lot of time here just because we were trying to decipher what was going on. But I think if we were actually, you know, potential users of this product, we would have gone, "I don’t really know what’s happening here."

And then we said okay, "Make product changes without coding. Edit product flows in one place, free developers' time." We would kind of keep skipping down and just reading the headlines. And so it's really important that your website—the headlines tell the story that you want to tell as you're scrolling down.

Yeah, and one thing I noticed on the two almost competing headlines, because the first very top one, I'm guessing that's the H1—is "We free developers from product edits," as in like developers get the vast majority of the value as in, you know, "I don't get distracted." And then if you scroll down, the second byline is actually "We're for product teams," right? To potentially work better with software engineers. And then "Make product changes without coding." Usually, it's not developers who want to do that—they have a way to do that. And now the value prop is for, you know, product managers or product designers, etc. So maybe consolidating that value to, you know, product and engineering teams and how can you create sort of like the value add for them together... this could be a little confusing into who you're actually trying to land this message—without developers, or product folks.

Yeah, that's the biggest thing. People are going to hit this website, and they're going to go, "Is it for me?" I think we have experience working with both developers and product people and understanding both of their challenges. But I think if I was just a product manager as my background, the developer line might not resonate with me. I might say like, "Oh, it’s for developers; it’s not actually for me." And I get, you know, at Webflow we have the same tension between, you know, you want to speed up the designer-developer workflows—you don’t want to like paint developers in a negative light like "avoid developers."

Or I know here, it's sort of help developers work on other things, so it’s a—there's a lot of tension to navigate, so you want to get the messaging right.

So this is cool; down here we get to some social proof. Here are some people that have used it—that's super important. It’s, you know, once I understand what this is, is it for me? Getting to some social proof around like does this work, can I trust it? Is really helpful. And so we got some people here and some quotes, and I don't know, maybe these are made up or whatever, but like they put their face behind it, they put their company name behind it. So anytime I see a face in a title in a company, unless you're doing something really shady, this really seems like a real person.

And we even got some—looks like some tweets or something like that about them. So this seems like a real product, and I think the website visually looks great; like it looks professionally done, and it sets a high bar for their product where I think there’s like professional product people that are working on this, and the product probably works well too.

I think the biggest takeaway for me is like who is it for? It's called Flycode, so it has something to do with code. There are benefits for non-developers, developers freeing software engineers; there's some confusion here that I think warrants some polishing. Yep, great! Awesome! Nice job, Flycode!

Okay, so for our next website, we're going to take a look at this one, which is actually submitted by a viewer of the channel—so looking forward to dive in with Colossian here: "Create videos with AI actors, real easy." Okay, this is one of those things where like the promise sounds really great. Yeah, but the execution oftentimes is lacking. And so the first thing that I want to do is see a video of this. I just want to see if this actually works and if it actually sounds like it, right there, and that’s awesome because there’s a video right here. So let's check this out and see if this looks...

"Are you ready to create studio-quality videos with AI actors? Nothing is easier! All Colossian users enjoy full commercial license to use their videos freely online and offline. What are you waiting for? Start with synthetic videos for free today!"

Okay, interesting! So, like, that was pretty cool. I don't necessarily think it's a human. Yeah, it's got that uncanny valley effect. So, that's a little bit more about the product. I do actually like the fact this is one of the only websites I've seen where, you know, a lot of websites try to get you to watch videos where it's like, "It's only 15 seconds!" Yeah, and I think that puts your guard down, or, “Okay, this is not going to take a lot of time.” That makes sense to me!

I've got some social proof; lots of videos. So, I actually kind of like this. It looks like they're using their own product to demo the videos to sell their own product. Yeah, first they immediately jump into personas, so "Hello managers!" Yeah, so all of a sudden I kind of go from AI actors, I guess, e-learning content, and all of a sudden, it's managers? I’m guessing at companies to do—like corporate training? I wouldn’t have expected this as being like the primary target—that's right, who they want to go after.

Yeah, they've booked a demo. Also, I wonder if there's a way to just right here at the top have a text box that people can put their text into and just see it generated? Yeah, and then you get your own content. Maybe you can't save it out until you start paying—that could be a great way to get people through the funnel of actually trying and being like, "Oh man, I got the thing right here and it works! I just want that video and I'm ready to go!"

Yeah, my guess is it's, you know, non-trivial or not free to generate these videos! Yeah, so it might be too expensive of an acquisition... and then let's take a quick look at one of the use cases here. What do we like? Plano videos... let's try explainer videos. And it looks like the use cases don't directly match to—right? Yeah, that is a little weird.

Okay, I'm not sure what's happening here. Yeah, this is a little—maybe feels a little unfinished. Um, yeah, whether it's like a flow or different categories of what you're trying to do. Another demo: Increased sales. Okay! Yeah, there’s a lot of text here. Yeah, yeah, I don't think I would read this. I would just look at it, I’d be like, “Increase sales 64%? Make a human connection? Boost—” and yeah, it’s kind of overwhelming with too much text.

Okay, so yeah, it looks like this can be improved. It seemed like the home page was pretty clear what they do; I think something just changed here. Whoa! We just got a new maybe as you scroll: "Create videos with..." Okay, we got—oh wow! I think I think the site maybe... the power of Webflow—I'm pushing a new version.

Okay, this is a little bit more clear because it's, you know, "Choose an actor, give them a script, generate your video!" Yeah, so this is almost something. "Training videos can cost up to five thousand dollars per minute. With Colossian, our clients save thousands on expensive studio." Okay, wow! We got like the version one, version two here. This is like the feedback we just gave—they basically just updated here!

Yeah! And then generate your video in a minute! So, okay, so one thing that stands out to me with the demo is when it's bigger, it looks less accurate—like the mouth, when it was smaller, was a little more credible. Yeah, so I, I—this actually unsells me a little bit more, but I think this UI of like getting me to actually build it and see how it works is more effective than the single demo video that they had.

Yeah! So being really precise around what you're using as your showcase demo is really important. Yep! I think the challenge here is not necessarily the website, um, and this is a hard problem to solve. The challenge is like can you get people to believe that this is a good enough replacement for live human beings? And I think the targeting with the specific use cases...

Yeah, I think we look at this and we're like, “Wow, this is really cool tech!" And then I can't off the top of my head think of something I would be really excited to use those for. I think the multi-language portion really sells it for me potentially. If you have a use case where you really want to create video content led by a host, and you really needed that many languages, it feels like this is the only way to really do that unless you’re only doing subtitles and not having that like more native experience.

Yeah, and we had to go all the way down in order to find that and pull that out, so that might be something to put up here too. Right, right! Awesome! Nice job, Colossian! Very cool product, beautiful website, well done!

Just a quick break to tell you, if you want your website to be featured in a future design review episode, submit your information in the link in the description down below. Now, back to more reviews!

Okay, let's take a look at Artifact now! Great name—Artifact! Yeah, very cool! And all of these that we've looked at so far, they all have these beautiful headers and videos. It seems to be a common theme that I think we're seeing here, which definitely gets my attention and sets the stage.

So, I see a lot of families and kids here. Very grabs you on an emotional level. Yeah, she only grows up once; I don't want to forget it! Artifact creates a personal podcast series about your child.

Okay, this is interesting! So we both have kids. Yeah, I just had a new... and I have daughters, and she hits me on a heart level. Maybe this is a product for me! Yeah, I just had a new baby three weeks ago too, so now's the time to be thinking about this. So, alright, let's see, but it's not immediately clear to me why I would want a personal podcast series about my child. Like, photos or some videos—like that makes sense to me!

So, I'm curious if they can convince me that I would want a podcast. Yeah, and immediately I'm sort of, um, I start to pay a lot of attention to the video, um, and trying to connect—is this a person using the product? I think so! Yeah, there's like interviews, or is it maybe—is it a video podcast? Are you recording only voice, like little notes around what's happening?

Uh, yeah, looks like they've gotten a lot of coverage. Yeah! So I think from up here what I take away is, okay, it's a podcast about your child! So like, cool, I get what it is. Um, I get that like is it for me because it's like if you don't have a child, it's not for you; if you have a child, it's for you.

And then I go down and I see this, and I start to see Today Show, CBS, Wirecutter, Wall Street Journal—so, like seems like they've gotten a lot of really impressive press which makes me take this seriously too, so that's really good! A lot of it, some of the quotes are great because it says like, "Memorable keepsakes, shareable audio heirloom." I'm guessing it's more for like close-knit families; it's not something that you would—beautiful gift—yeah, it's maybe great gifts for families.

Okay, so let's see... okay, what is the gift? An app? Is it a subscription? Is it, you know, something where you like play, you know, um, we interview you about your child— a pro-interviewer? Ah, this was a service half an hour over the phone? We edit and deliver within five days a beautifully produced episode that lives in your family account.

Okay, family account... is that on their website? Do I need an app for that? Is that like on some podcast platform? Monthly follow-ups text you a personalized question each month, answer with a voice note, and we add it.

It's very interesting—that is not what I expected. From the personalized podcast initially, I was thinking, you know, parents every day kind of do a little interview with a kid or ask them about their day, and then you keep that as a memento. This is a professionally produced interview with a parent about their child to keep as a keepsake with some, um, I'm not quite sure, voice notes that are added.

Yeah, I was imagining more of like the voice notes as like a software product that you're using, and it seems more like you, the parent, documenting the kid's life rather than the kid actually being involved! Actually, maybe when they get older— I think most folks seeing this will now immediately think, "Okay, how much does it cost? What is it?" I can see sort of the process and how gifting works.

And we can hear what one sounds like: “She pulled a toy airplane out of her little toy box and held it up in the air and started flying it around, so she knew what the airplane does even though we've only talked about that maybe twice.” Okay, so kind of documenting through stories your child's life.

Um, this wasn't obvious to me that I could click on this to play it. Yep, I think like a big play button would be more obvious. This was a good clue here. I like the background music; it sounds like good quality. Yes, that seems kind of professional! So I like that it's like, uh, it makes me think of like this is a little bit more like pro-audio scrapbooking to remember these moments about your child, and then professional interviewers, so journalists, journalist, journalists, actor and podcast hosts.

So, I see New York Times in The Guardian—all right; there's like some professionals. Guessing you send this out to family or just keep it to archival?

Club? Yeah, let's see—they're crafted into instant heirlooms. Do you have to play it through their app? Oh! And you can add photos too? Yeah, it looks like an app that they have here, an Artifact app.

And I guess you share the app with friends or maybe it's web-based? Yeah, actually, maybe that's a URL down there. So that’s probably web-based, something on their website. I'm very curious because it requires an account—if you send it to other folks, it's a monthly subscription.

So I'm guessing that a lot of the value is in these like monthly follow-ups that then family get to, um, kind of relive. I do this thing with my daughters where I do one second every day—it's a similar product where you record videos throughout the day and then you remember one second; it's a mark in the app—that's what it is. And you can relive the, uh, the year.

This feels like a similar value, Addison—like don't forget the little moments, um, and create this almost like profile of my kid. Cool! How long are your interviews?

Yeah, it's interesting. It's very beautiful; it's very, um, looks great quality, seems good, pristine, a lot of press; seems like something I can trust. They've even got their reviews up here: "A thousand plus reviews, nearly five stars." There! Very cool!

Yeah, very awesome! Seems like something I'd probably give it a try; I'm gonna check it out! Awesome! Yeah! Cool! Nice work Artifact—great job, well done!

Well, awesome! That's our videos for today! Hope you all enjoyed them. Thank you to everybody who submitted your websites, and especially huge thank you to you, Vlad, and Webflow for hosting us here. Really appreciate it! It was an immense pleasure. It's always awesome to see what can be built with Webflow and what startups—how startups are trying to get their message out there.

That's... it's always a challenge and a struggle, but uh, it's so worth it to find a connection with customers, etc. And so great to have you here! Yeah, it's a beautiful space! We really appreciate it! Awesome!

Well, thanks everyone! We will see you on the next design review. [Music] Thank you!