On many web portfolio sites, especially in the field of design the first thing that you will notice is an introductory text consisting of a few words about the company or the designer behind the site. The second thing you will notices is how they are all the same and all cliche by now. They do nothing to further the brand and they are often tremendous wastes of space.
Happy Cog may have been one of the first sites to use them, a while back, but since then they’ve become as trendy as brightly colored star-bursts and insane gradients.
Webdesigner Depot put out a post the other day called “50 Inspirational Website Introductions.” While there are 50 of them, they are all less than inspirational. In fact they are a perfect collection of homogeneous design decisions that lead to none-point-zero memorability.
I collected the words and phrases from each of the 50 “intros” and created this infographic with the data.
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Wow Bryan
Amazing post – never seen anything like it anywhere.
Took guts and chutzpah.
Points well taken. Could also apply to more than website designers.
If designers can’t come up with original words, how can clients trust they will come up with original designs?
Your statistical breakdowns show me you took a long time to present your ideas in a coherent fashion.
Nice going.
_S
Thanks Shane, appreciate it.
I love your point about this concept translating to original designs aw well.
And you’re right that this did take a good while. Glad you enjoy it!
Thanks for reading,
Bryan
Originality has always been difficult to find, but easy to recognize.
I couldn’t agree with you more. Well researched and presented.
Cheers.
Brilliant, this is something that is everywhere now and whilst at first it was a quirky personal approach it’s been very over done.
Thanks for giving stats on the most overused intros on personal websites. I’ll make a mental note to avoid any of those kind of introductions when I redesign my website.
Nice! Work that data!
Good timing — I was just explaining to my wife how sick I was of the whole “Hi, I’m so-and-so and I make Websites” — especially when combined with the cute cartoon character. The single biggest cliche on the Web right now.
[...] Repetitive Website Intros Examined exposes how the design industry tends to stick to prevailing trends by presenting data on overused [...]
[...] Repetitive Website Intros Examined exposes how the design industry tends to stick to prevailing trends by presenting data on overused [...]
[...] 8. Repetitive Website Intros Examined exposes how the design industry tends to stick to prevailing trends by presenting data on overused keywords, readability and other tidbits of incriminating numbers in website introductions based on the sites on this article. [...]
[...] Repetitive Website Intros Examined exposes how the design industry tends to stick to prevailing trends by presenting data on overused [...]
Intereting article (and timely as I write the intro for our site redesign!). Why anyone would think that “I am…” is unique is anyone’s guess and “Hello” is nearly as bad as “Welcome”. But isn’t there a good reason for using words such as “web” and “design” if that’s what you do?. These are words that are used very frequently as search terms and somewhat understood by the general population. There is a danger that designers get too creative and in an effort to be unique and innovative start using terms that are so obscure that no one understands what they do.
@ Sandra I appreciate your thought on this. I think you’re right about some designers going too far to be ultimately creative. I don’t think that the use of web and design is all that bad on these sites. It’s more the concept of this big intro text and the generic structure of them. If you’re a web designer, people should know! Thanks for reading.
@ Sandra I appreciate your thought on this. I think you’re right about some designers going too far to be ultimately creative. I don’t think that the use of web and design is all that bad on these sites. It’s more the concept of this big intro text and the generic structure of them. If you’re a web designer, people should know! Thanks for reading.
[...] Repetitive Website Intros Examined exposes how the design industry tends to stick to prevailing trends by presenting data on overused [...]
Carsonified.com has a great thing going on with using their whole site as an introduction to their brand and their entire team. I recommend checking it out, it’s one of the coolest business web sites I’ve seen in a long time!
[...] 50 REPETITIVE & ANNOYING Website Intros Examined [...]
Humm, I don’t agree with this post…
Yeah sure, the words “hello I’m a…” are overused, but when I arrive on a website I like to know what is it.
If I want to know more, I click on the “about” page, but I love to know the purpose of the site, company or person.
“I’m a graphic designer”, “This software provides you XXX”, “”A site about XXX”, it takes 2 lines but is reaaaaally pleasant.
For me, an introduction like Chris Spooner’s is not really original but verry usefull “Hello I’m Chris Spooner. I design stuff”.
[...] [...]
I pretty much agree with Kumo.
These things might not be original or terribly creative, but conventions like these, in design, structure and lexicon, lead to better usability. And I’d take usability over “creative originality” on the web in the majority of cases.
[...] 8. Repetitive Website Intros Examined exposes how the design industry tends to stick to prevailing trends by presenting data on overused keywords, readability and other tidbits of incriminating numbers in website introductions based on the sites on this article. [...]
[...] to propose ideas for visualizing the web. These could be literal and insightful. Or playful and thought provoking. The only constraint: use real (public and anonymous) data to tell a story about how it the [...]
I pretty much agree with you Bryan. However you take a 2-year old website as an example. This type of introduction wasn’t that common then…
Imagine most have ‘web’ and ‘design’ in their intro purely for SEO purposes (although for most it’s useless because they will never get top rankings)
‘I am’ sounds a little unprofessional… wonder what kind of clients these intros get?