<story><title>Ask HN: Is there an “uncanny valley” effect with startup MVPs?</title><text>I am asking because I have noticed that as I build better landing pages for my MVPs I get judged more harshly.
This got me thinking if there is a way in which having a not particularly attractive landing page might get people to approach the product in a different way.</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>naet</author><text>Checking your actual landing page ( &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;propertywebbuilder.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;propertywebbuilder.com&lt;/a&gt; ) and my opinion is... that it isn&amp;#x27;t a very good landing page.  The sizing and spacing are awkward and blocky, your color scheme clashes with your images, the images are generic and tacky, everything is too big and wide, etc.  Maybe because you worked on it you feel that it is a great modern style landing page, but that isn&amp;#x27;t how it reads to me (and seemingly to other people as well).&lt;p&gt;Maybe you look at a SIMPLER site like &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;tom.preston-werner.com&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;tom.preston-werner.com&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt; and mistakenly equate that with a &amp;quot;worse&amp;quot; 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&amp;#x27;t make it better, it would make it way worse.&lt;p&gt;Rather than looking for an external factor like a &amp;quot;mythical uncanny valley&amp;quot; to explain your landing page&amp;#x27;s poor performance, look inwards at your individual styling and what could be improved.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pantulis</author><text>To be fair with OP, comparing Preston-Werner&amp;#x27;s blog to a landing page is not really an apples to apples comparison, imho, as the purpose is totally different.&lt;p&gt;Still, OP has lots of work to do on that landing page, but not only on the design (there are a gazillion templates for that) but on how does it convey the value of the service it&amp;#x27;s offering. Also almost all clicks take inmediately to a login page without much explanation.</text></comment>
<story><title>Ask HN: Is there an “uncanny valley” effect with startup MVPs?</title><text>I am asking because I have noticed that as I build better landing pages for my MVPs I get judged more harshly.
This got me thinking if there is a way in which having a not particularly attractive landing page might get people to approach the product in a different way.</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>naet</author><text>Checking your actual landing page ( &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;propertywebbuilder.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;propertywebbuilder.com&lt;/a&gt; ) and my opinion is... that it isn&amp;#x27;t a very good landing page.  The sizing and spacing are awkward and blocky, your color scheme clashes with your images, the images are generic and tacky, everything is too big and wide, etc.  Maybe because you worked on it you feel that it is a great modern style landing page, but that isn&amp;#x27;t how it reads to me (and seemingly to other people as well).&lt;p&gt;Maybe you look at a SIMPLER site like &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;tom.preston-werner.com&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;tom.preston-werner.com&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt; and mistakenly equate that with a &amp;quot;worse&amp;quot; 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&amp;#x27;t make it better, it would make it way worse.&lt;p&gt;Rather than looking for an external factor like a &amp;quot;mythical uncanny valley&amp;quot; to explain your landing page&amp;#x27;s poor performance, look inwards at your individual styling and what could be improved.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>yupper32</author><text>Oh jeez, yeah that first site looks like an auto-generated scam&amp;#x2F;spam website. I&amp;#x27;d never enter anything into that website.</text></comment>