Karri Saarinen, co-founder and CEO of Linear, reflects on the historical iterations of Linear's landing page design.
Insight
Saarinen: Overly polished websites create misleading expectations for early-stage startups
“You might try to, like, build very polished or fancy websites very early on, but what that kind of, like, tells you is, like, it maybe sets the wrong expectation for the user, that if your product is just that, I don't know, you built it last month, and, like,…”
Insight
Saarinen: Early startups should use narrow category terms, not vague visions
“In the very beginning, what you're trying to sell is you try to find someone to actually use your product and like just understand what it is. So what we did here was that we wanted to put the issue tracking. We knew that that wasn't the, like, Long-term visio…”
Insight
Saarinen: Homepages should inform unacquainted visitors without overwhelming detail
“The way I think about that, that landing page, the first, the homepage is kind of like the front page. So like, you can't explain everything. Like, you can't explain all the features. You can't explain all the customer stories and everything. That's why there'…”
Insight
Saarinen: Enterprise startups cannot rely on landing page conversion rates
“The reason the conversion is slow, because you are going after enterprises, and it's like, there, there's probably no way to, like, increase that conversion flow, like, the conversion rate, really, Because enterprises are not necessarily coming to websites and…”
Insight
Saarinen: Pair standard body fonts with unique headline typefaces on websites
“It's not like you should just use one typeface, everything, because in small sizes, A lot of typefaces don't work. You probably have to use something fairly standard so people can read it. But for headlines and special points, you can pair it with something li…”
Insight
Saarinen: Highlight unique differences rather than directly comparing to competitors
“I don't think you should, like, make, compare it to yourself to the competition, like, directly, like, say, like, hey, we do better this and that, like, or something like that. But, like, I think you should look at, like, what are those companies saying? How a…”