Ever since we started WooThemes, we’ve been absolutely fascinated with top notch design and we’d like to believe that this focus has been evident throughout all of our activities (from our themes, to the user experience on our site, our content and also our marketing campaigns). This should also be fairly obvious when you consider the amount of amazing web designers we’ve collaborated with, plus we’re always harping on about how awesome our designs are anyway…
Whilst design is ultimately subjective, one thing that can’t be disputed is the fact that our designer focus has probably contributed significantly to our success. This seems to be confirmed by startup guru, Dave McClure, in a recent BusinessWeek article about the value of design to startups:
“Design and marketing aren’t just as important as engineering: They are way more important.”
So in a very techy industry (the interwebs), there seems to be a lot of room for the more design-orientated folk among us. In the past, you could probably get by if you had a superior & groundbreaking product, but these days your competition is much tougher and you need to fight for every person that gives you their attention (superb design tends to be successful in this regard).
In a recent comparison of microblogging giants, Tumblr & Posterous, the author says (about Tumblr’s popularity):
“Or, to put it another way: Posterous is an engineered product, while Tumblr is a designed product.”
Two posts on the topic and both seems to indicate that a superb design has become a competitive advantage, which may just differentiate you from your competitors (and ultimately bring you success, instead of putting that on their doorstep).
Design.
By now you can guess where we’re going with this: don’t underestimate the value that design can bring to your startup or just any project in general.
Superb design work is admittedly quite expensive, but a mediocre design, user experience & marketing campaign just won’t cut it anymore. If you haven’t been giving this enough thought & energy until now, you need to implement a more design-focused approach in your thinking & strategizing.
We’re just one of the success stories in terms of companies that has been successful with this approach and whilst I don’t think that you can’t be successful without such an approach; I do think you’re giving yourself a massive head start. Bonus for me is the fact that others seem to be convinced that you can design your way to the top.
7 Responses to “A Designed Startup”
Great thoughts and I fully agree.
Nice thought and something Adii gave me some advice on recently.
However what about the whole 37Signals mantra of sheer simplicity = success. Is that classed as “good design” because of it’s simplicity? I would say there are better “designed” apps out there than 37Signals but they have had great success.
Good point… I think 37Signals had a lot of success earlier on, which gave them a lot of traction and momentum to continue growing. So maybe the space was less crowded back then? Dunno…
And also consider that all of 37Signals’ marketing sites use impeccable design, which is where the value comes in.
Ah true enough. That’s a fair point about their marketing sites. But does that mean that good design holds most of it’s value in the marketing side of things?
37signals products are designed with the purpose to be extremely easy to use. Lots of thought goes into the usability and given the purpose of the product the design is sufficiently pleasing because they solve the problem so very well.
Simple does not equal to “bad design.” All 37signals’ products are very well designed and well thought, by removing all the clutter that doesn’t needed by most users.
Designed need to be looks good even if it is simple becouse visitor needs to be come back on website.