Your Website Is Not for You

Turns out the biggest fight over your site is whether it’s a tool, a trophy, or a tantrum

TLDR: The article says company websites should help visitors, not flatter the people running the business. Commenters instantly split into camps: some backed user-first thinking, while others argued the web should still feel personal, artistic, and true to a brand — not like a joyless sales machine.

A spicy little web-design sermon just lit up the comment section after arguing that your company website is not about your personal taste — it’s supposed to help ordinary visitors find what they need and actually do something, like buy, call, or sign up. The author’s big complaint: bosses keep steamrolling designers with vibes-based demands like changing colors or cluttering pages, even when research says otherwise. In other words, the site slowly mutates from a useful tool into a fancy shrine for leadership ego.

But the community was absolutely not ready to nod along quietly. One camp yelled, basically, “Hold on — designers are not magical truth machines.” Critics argued that founders and long-time business owners often understand the customer better than a designer parachuting in with a so-called scientific process. Another faction went even harder, rejecting the article’s cold, practical view of the web entirely. For them, saying a website “isn’t art” is how you end up with the same dull, soulless internet everywhere. That sparked the big drama: Should a website mainly serve the user, or should it also show personality, taste, and brand identity?

The funniest energy came from the defiantly personal-homepage crowd, with one commenter practically shrugging, “My website is for me — visitors can come along or keep scrolling.” The result? A classic online pile-on where usability, ego, creativity, and corporate branding all entered the ring — and nobody left without side-eye.

Key Points

  • The article says websites are often treated by internal stakeholders as reflections of personal or brand identity rather than as tools for users.
  • It states that a website's primary function is to help customers, leads, visitors, or members complete tasks they came to accomplish.
  • The author says designers are often overruled by decision-makers despite presenting research, user testing, and competitive analysis.
  • According to the article, repeated compromises during reviews can result in websites that satisfy leadership preferences but perform poorly for users.
  • The article recommends evaluating design feedback by asking whether a change helps the user and by relying on research-backed design rationale.

Hottest takes

"My website is absolutely for me" — monokai_nl
"This product mindset fundamentally makes the web a boring place" — monokai_nl
"A website is a compromise between three parties" — jdw64
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