The most minimalist commercial website you'll ever see | Hacker News Reader

The most minimalist commercial website you'll ever see

biketek.com

154 pointseykanal97 comments

I think that's a great commercial website, better than the majority of commercial websites in existence today.

I would include several sentences about the business and a photo or two for perfection.

"BikeTek sells and repairs all kinds of bicycles, with an emphasis on left-handed 7-wheeled racing bicycles. We maintain an inventory of about 700 bicycles and can get anything you want in stock within a week."

I would also probably make it a minimally valid HTML page. But other than that, perfect.

Ha. Of course the first instinct is to start adding stuff to it.

It's already extremely close to being valid HTML5. All it needs is a DOCTYPE declaration and a title; all the rest is optional.

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Yes

Walk into an Apple store and ask for an engraved iPad 2. Insist that you have it in-hand by next week. Tell me how it goes.

While you're there, ask for an iPhone 4S. And a flux capacitor. And a dinner date with Steve Jobs and John Scully.

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And yet it was a correct answer for the question actually asked, not implied.

Also, this is not bad, considering it's the 8th largest publicly traded company in the world: http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/

I think I heard something about Warren Buffet paying the eleven-year-old kid of a relative to put up his site, seriously.

If you have a source, I'd love to read that story.

You know, I believe I read about that on HN long ago. Google is utterly failing me for the lookup, though.

Then he did a pretty good job.

Maybe I could appreciate that, maybe, if it weren't for the GEICO ad on there?

I can't even take it seriously. If I didn't know what that company was to start out with I would certainly never, ever, invest in them.

Which I think means the website absolutely sucks.

That's not the intended audience. They are not going to sell shares on the base of the website alone.

The web site is there to inform fans and shareholders.

By the way:

"If you have any comments about our WEB page, you can either write us at the address shown above or e-mail us at berkshire@berkshirehathaway.com. However, due to the limited number of personnel in our corporate office, we are unable to provide a direct response."

GEICO is a wholly owned subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, so the ad is appropriate.

So close, and yet so far...

Easy enough to make it useful - and look exactly the same - by linking the address to a map, the email to a sendto:, etc.

There's a fine line between "minimalist" and "inadequate". We're in 2011; I expect a website be simple yet intuitively, if not proactively, functional.

Why bother? I imagine that from their standpoint, a website is a glorified business card. They're not trying to impress or sell you anything, but at the same time they went to the trouble of posting virtually all the useful information you could need. Yes, they could link to google maps, but your business card doesn't do that, so why should their website?

If I (re)learned anything from this site, it's that "because it can" is a crappy reason to add features. I'm sure this site serves them very well.

"Yes, they could link to google maps, but your business card doesn't do that, so why should their website?"

Back of my next business card (currently designing) will have a map on the back. Same point: all relevant information should be there, answering obvious questions before they're asked.

Because it's a website. If I expected a business card, I'd ask for a business card. I go to the website because I expect it to give me relevant information. If I go to the website and find that I have to go to Google to search for directions or a map, you lose out on a lot. Number one, I'm no longer primarily thinking about your establishment. Number two, my time is wasted. Number three, as I'm searching Google, it recommends a closer bike shop.

It's a webpage, I don't see it unreasonable at all to expect or hope that it has basic webpage features.

As a customer, I know that the effort to insert two <a href> tags is microscopic compared to even a small number of customers having to do those actions manually. And if that tiny bit of effort causes even one additional conversion... it seems absolutely worth it. No?

They're not trying to impress or sell you anything

You seem to have forgotten that part.

By the way, remember that this is a bicycle shop we're talking about. They probably spend a lot more time thinking about bicycles than SEO or optimizing click-through to visit ratios, and IMHO that's how it should be.

A bike SHOP isn't trying to sell you anything? How long to they expect to stay in "business?"

Their website is obviously there for exactly one purpose.

A potential customer says, "I want to go to BikeTek, but how do I get there? When are they open?" googles biketek "Oh, ok!"

That's it.

Awright, so I do that.

Select, right-click, copy, Ctrl-T, tab, right-click, paste, enter. 302,000 results. First one is probably it, and has a map ... but there's all this other stuff which I spend a couple useless seconds reviewing because I already spent enough time (8 steps) to get to this page.

But wait, that's not where I start. The issue arises because I'm _already_ looking at biketek.com, so it doesn't occur to me to "google biketek" (if I'm a legitimate customer, how do you think I probably got to the website in the first place?). The address is right there; I want to know where that is on a map. So... select address, right-click, copy, Ctrl-T, maps.google.com, right-click, hope the split lines will paste properly, paste, sigh with relief that it did (often doesn't for some reason), enter, ah there it - but is it really? I've had some problems with incorrect locations for addresses lately, so it'd be nice if someone had already verified the map is correct. 7 steps plus fussing.

The alternative I'm pushing for is: click. There's the map, verified, in 1 step.

Sorry, which way is "minimalist"?

Yeah, I know. "Just do ... ... ... That's it." The difference between 7-8 steps and 1 is why Apple's market cap is ~$0.3T.

This is a bicycle shop. They think about bicycles, not SEO.

Are you arguing they would be better off with no webpage? Or that they need to hire a webmaster? Do you even know that they get significant web traffic? Perhaps it's all word of mouth.

"... but how do i get there?" - so where is the link to google maps?

and i don't understand why they didn't link the email-adress. that's just immature.

I made this single-page for my cousin last year: http://southeastcardio.com/

It has a map link (he didn't want to publish an email address).

There's no visual distinction between the map link and the rest of the text. That's bad.

You're right. I added an underline to the map link. Thanks!

I like it. The same uber-minimalist concept, but a minimal but perhaps optimal set of smart additions [In order of importance, 1) description of services offered, 2) map link, 3) aesthetic fonts, colours, layout].

If you have a business which doesn’t rely on the web to acquire customers a description is really only noise. (I also think that adding just one sentence or two wouldn’t turn this into a successful acquisition tool.)

(I think colors and layout are perfectly alright. Also, some people hate the Trebuchet font, I don’t. It looks great for this application.)

A sentence or two wouldn't turn it into a successful acquisition tool, but given that the site includes no identifying design elements (logo, shared visual aesthetic with other marketing materials, etc), a one-sentence description would serve as a good last-minute sanity check that the user has indeed found the right business ("Oh, so this is definitely the Biketek that sells fixed-gear bicycles in Pittsburgh, not the Biketek that manufactures exercise bikes and has a business office in Pittsburgh").

That’s a great point, you are right.

Literally much better than every single restaurant website I've ever had the displeasure of visiting.

Every time I go to a restaurant that's practically empty, I check the website on my phone and it's always really bad (busy restaurants usually have at least a decent site). The worst part is I often offer to do a redesign for a modest price but they never see the value in it.

I think it's an interesting issue. I'm not actually convinced that restaurants even really need much of a website, honestly. The busy ones could probably do fine without altogether.. so in some ways, the indifference isn't what surprises me... What surprises me is the unbelievably awful 5,000-10,000$ flash monstrosities that make it basically impossible for me to figure out if you've got egg salad.

For me the world is split first into things assist in, or get in the way of me eating egg salad.

Doesn't work like that here (Paris but france generally). Most busy restaurants i know don't have a website at all !

There are several people on HN who have tried to attack that market, in various ways. I'd be interested if any of reads this how they've fared? It's a hard, hard market...

It's crazy, I've gone rock bottom and offered a one-page redesign for $500 (for a restaurant whose site was just a logo and a link to a PDF of their menu), and it's still like pulling teeth. I understand that they're very cash-conscious (my father owns a restaurant), but they lose way more money than that on those dumb coupon books that mainly attract cheapskate customers who never come back.

Are you the Oatmeal Guy by any chance: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/restaurant_website

No, but thanks for sharing. Now I've got someone else to wish I was! (Filing Oatmeal Guy between Tina Fey and the homeless guy in my neighborhood that looks like Mick Jagger)

It's got all the useful information you may want, with none of the cruft. I'm either amazed or... actually, no, I'm just amazed.

Far too often I spend what seems like ages clicking around a store website trying to find where they are and when they are open.

ok I clearly have to clean mine up: http://funkymonkeycorp.com/

Hey buddy, you might want to check your code. Your index's source is filled with drug-related spam links.

Edit: Oh, and by the way, I liked your site a lot better than the OP :-)

Agreed it just crashed my browser trying to send me to a "virus scanner"...

Ouch, fixed that and hopefully fixed the security breach.

Also simplified the site: http://funkymonkeycorp.com/

Much better now! Though I kinda liked the image :) Also, why not have the company name in <h1>? Just an idea though.

This reminded me of a pg quote:

“When you’re forced to be simple, you’re forced to face the real problem. When you can’t deliver ornament, you have to deliver substance.”

http://www.paulgraham.com/taste.html

relevant: http://xkcd.com/773/

Mobile friendly and everything.

This is a huge point. It really is. So many websites turn me off because they're not mobile friendly when I want to read them. At least this one is. I could go in and get exactly the information I needed, and without 400 redirects and page-reshapings for all the pictures that'd be displayed.

So this is what it feels like when I hear people discuss art.

One side claims it's genius with everything taken away lest only the most pertinent information. Inserts a gobbit from Einstein on minimalism and strokes his beard in awe.

The other: it's dumb.

Has anyone ever done good research on how a minimalist web site might compare to a fancier version with respect to the various objectives of the site owner? Some other minimalist sites that perform quite well are Hacker News and Craigslist. Have site owners been mis-led into thinking that flashiness equates to credibility or customer satisfaction?

In terms of credibility, there is serious Stanford research that says that "professional" looking sites increase credibility/trust.

I don't think there's anything wrong with having polished site aesthetics as long as it doesn't sacrifice on the objectives. It's not a zero-sum game.

That's not minimalism, that's just lazy.

Nope, it's minimalism all right :)

Lazy would be hiring someone who creates an ugly flash website that links to a pdf menu which never gets updated.

Are they mutually exclusive? Serious question

Wow. The index page is just a placeholder while the content is completed for the WordPress template I bought on ThemeForest. Frank @ Biketek

Well, it made me want to go look up biketek on Google, so I could find some information about who they are and what they do.

So, what do they do?

My gut feel is that they're probably one of those businesses who, if you don't already know exactly what they do, you're not part of their target market.

This is _exactly_ the sort of website I'll suggest if, say, Stradivarius came to me and said "I want a website for my violin building business".

If your demand so outstrips your supply that there's no way you need more customers than you're already servicing, why would you need anything more than this for a website?

Exactly. I have no idea. Do they sell bikes? Repair bikes? Manufacture them?

If they do sell bikes, I think they at the very least need an inventory list. I hate store sites where I can't search to see if you have a product and what the price is.

While it is minimal, its about as useful to me a yellow page ad -- which is to say it also has minimal value.

I used to live a few blocks away from this place. They sell and service bikes and sell related gear. They're a fairly run-of-the-mill higher-end bike shop.

Lots of A/B testing went into this.

I love it. Now if restaurants would follow suit.

And <br> is the only tag.

Actually much like the humans.txt file for sites -- all sites should have a contact.txt file that is modeled after this and has one URL to their address on gmaps.

so you could type into your browser: hardknoxcafe.com/contact.txt and get all the info you needed.

minimal style.

Pretty soon, we'll need some sort of index to manage all of these text files full of useful information. We can connect them together to make it easier to navigate. Let's call these hyperlinks.

i don't know their audience but i imagine they're leaving opportunities on the table. still, it's better than many commercial sites who try to do more.

I would enlarge the font a bit, put more spacing between lines, and use a sans font.

http://jsfiddle.net/wkmhm/

It doesn't use any font at all. Change your browser default to a sans if that's what you want.

I would make the times more readable thus.

http://jsfiddle.net/254EV/

and add an a-href-mailto to the email address.

what i would really do is to microformat the address and relevant data so i can be sure they're properly crawled and treated. presentation clearly doesn't matter much here.

That looks like a useful site, thanks!

You mean sans-serif?

Yea, though I didn't mean a specific font called "sans-serif", just any sans serif font

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sans-serif

You're missing the point. Its awesomeness is in the fact they're hosting this on an iPod Touch submerged in four gallons of pizza sauce.

that'd be osm! I'll give it a try and keep you posted!

haha.

I like it a lot. But I have two changes.

1) fix the non-parallel use of "Thur" - use "Thu" instead or even "Thurs"

2) no need for the "email:" line - just put the email

I hired the same designer for my personal website: http://scottmilliken.com

I hope that this style catches on - better than the blog templates most people use. Being a bike store I would have thought they'd list brands and specialities though.. It seems the site would only be useful if you know the shop.

I would link the email address, but other than that, it's nearly perfect. I agree a description of what they do would be helpful.

I treat my website the same way: http://nathanmanousos.com/

Already mobile optimized!

I love it. Even the font.

The font is not specified....

I expect to find this information without having to leave google maps. Store hours is the only reason I end up going to a website when I need contact information, which I despise having to do.

Remove "email:" to make it more minimal :)

Isn't the email address highly vulnerable to harvesting for spamming purposes?

Who cares? Spam is more or less a solved problem. (Gmail!)

I like it - it should have a little styling though. Like a nice font.

It would also be cool if they had something that indicated really quickly what they did... visually, maybe a picture of a bike, or the store or something. Even better if the picture was animated like those other websites.

I like music too - maybe they could play stairway to heaven real loud as soon as I got there. That would be sweet!

Maybe they could engage me better if they had the text do something... like use the <blink> tag.

I tried to like this on facebook and share it on twitter after wanting to post it to digg -- but the buttons dont seem to load for me.

Nice. I'd love to know what percentage of readers here realize you are joking. Sheldon Cooperism is pretty rampant in these parts, so I am guessing less than 90%.

What I really like about it is you can find their store hours right away; countless shops here have that information very well hidden under unsuspecting links like "about" ("Impressum" in German).

Way too much white space at the top :P

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