Website design formula I used to fetch 100 users in 30 days

The UI of your app generally matters less than your website. The more unique your value prop is and the more niche your market, the less the design will matter.

But, and this is a big but, you need to have a good website design pretty much no matter what. This isn't 10 years ago. There's no reason to have a poor website UI when there are so many high-quality templates to use. A generic but good-looking website with good copy is the bare minimum.

I've been working with a company that has a terrible website. They convert zero leads. Zero. All of their customer-facing marketing materials are also poorly designed. They can not understand why they can't get clients and refuse to believe it is their website despite all the data suggesting otherwise.

It will never matter how good their product is because they aren't solving the common denominator at the very top of their funnel. They've cycled through 10 different salespeople. over the last 2 years with no results. But they are dead-set on the idea that their website isn't the problem.

Don't be that company.

Optimize Copy:

• Your copy is what convinces visitors to take action on your page, whether that's making a purchase or downloading software.

• Hemingway Editor helps to check the comprehension level of anything you write, passive voice, etc.

• Interviewed 22 people about the copy on our website. This is key! Just walk them through the website and ask them to read out loud + give a stream of consciousness on what they are reading.

Color:

• Use neutral tones to allow your primary colors to shine. Neutral tones (whites, greys, and blacks) can balance out bright colors and give them emphasis.

• Use tints and shades to add dynamism to your project. Have a hover state or pressed state? Use tints and shade to indicate these changes.

• Great color resources:

Need a color palette that looks presentable? Try one of the below:

1. Beginner generators/libraries: Coolors, Colormind, and Color Hunt

2. More advanced palette tools: Adobe Colour, Eva Design System, Paletton, Google Material Color, and Leonardo Color.

Want to see color in context?

1. Trying to hop on the gradient trend? See Grabient, UI Gradients, or MyColor.

2. Want to make sure your site is accessible and compliant? Try one of the following: WebAim Contrast Checker, Microsoft Fluent UI Theme Generator.

Interview:

• I mentioned this earlier but keep interviewing people. Friends, family, and those who sign up. Do not start marketing until you have talked to a dozen people and kept iterating on your website. This YC combinator interview guide is more for product validation, but it gets the point across.

• A key insight we got from interviews was, “Sounds good, but I still don’t get it”. So we had two choices:

• Either create Mockups to show how our product will look OR create other visual elements.

Effective ways to find people for interviews:

Here are a couple of effective ways to find people for interviews:

• cold calling/in-person interviews: This worked exceptionally well for me. I used to visit local office buildings and restaurants (in the US and Canada) to talk to potential customers. Just tell them you are doing market research, and ask if they have 5 mins for a couple of questions. Don't be salty and it's okay if they say no. Just move on.

• Reddit/fb Groups or online communities your potential customers gather: First, check if others have asked about the problems you tried to solve before. If so, DM the op and those who commented for follow-up questions. You can also post potential solutions for feedback or ask people to discuss the problems.

• Cold email/dm then call: find your potential customers' emails or LinkedIn/twitter/IG and write them a message. Make it personal, short, and easy to respond. The main objective is to have them respond to the email, and then more follow-up questions. Finally, ask for a call for more in-depth interviews.

Here are some resources I think might be helpful:

• this YC video ( and a couple of old ones) will give you some solid ways to validate ideas.

• "the mom test" by rob fitzpatrick. Highly recommended when coming up with interview questions. One trick is to ask Chatgpt to come up with interview questions based on this book and the problems you are trying to solve.

• this YC video, share how to do B2B sales by a YC alumni.

Give an idea of how the app functions:

• I did not want to insert a half-assed Mockup without doing a lot of validation on it. So instead we focused on getting value across in the easiest way possible.

• That’s where Lottie comes in. Think of Lottie as a nice gif maker that is friendly for websites.

• We hired someone from upwork.com to make 3 Lotties for just $150! And they are the ones you see on the website. This helped people understand the value much better.

Watch users use your website:

• Install something like hotjar.com and tag people who click on elements, scroll down, stop and read sections, etc. Look at your numbers. Does this match industry standards? If not, interview people and figure out why they are not reading, scrolling, or clicking

That's it, hope it was helpful!

To make it easier for founders, we launched some simple and free notion templates that will help you in your journey.

I hate quoting Steve jobs but I love the one where he goes “everything in the world was created by people no smarter than you”. It’s true, and it’s given me a lot of confidence to achieve.

Thank you for reading:)