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Comment by vinhboy | Hacker News Reader

The TrueCar homepage (http://www.truecar.com/) looks like one of those generic 404/squatter page.

Those generic parked domain pages are heavily A/B tested and iterated to achieve maximum revenue per user.

What this tells me is TrueCar probably has a pretty solid layout that gets users to click and start the process.

This is totally right - that page is A/B tested to high heaven and is targeted at the mainstream car buyer (aka "typically less internet-savvy") who seem to respond best to that kind of layout.

Trust me, they tried a bunch of different Web 2.0-ish layouts and they all lose to these kinds of generic-looking pages. Sad but true.

Source: previous TrueCar employee.

I had assumed they typo'd their link and I had clicked through to a squatter, and closed the tab. Only after seeing your comment did I realise it was correct and go back and look.

Yeah, you're not wrong.

Its quite odd, and fascinating, because it has the info you'd want to see, give it a second or two, and it does look purposely designed. But, yes, it looks like a parked domain page. Or at the very least, hints at one.

I guess its one of those instances where no one sort of blinked and saw it how we are seeing it... if you know what I mean. Same sort of thing that happens when a song writer writes a song they genuinely thought was original, only to find out they has dragged up something from their subconscious that they heard before. I bet if at some point someone said, hey, that looks like a parked domain page the designers would have immediately seen it too.

I'm super confused by this (you're one of a few people to say it), because that page doesn't look spammy to me at all. A little corporate, maybe. The list of car links on the front page is workable as a UX.

I think it's just the basic design. Here are a few examples using motherboard as a root word:

http://mother.com/

http://mother.net/

http://motherboard.com/

http://www.motherboards.com/

I think it has to do with a single color header, half the page with plain blue links and the other half with a stock-looking photo.

Those pages all do look super spammy to me. The Truecar one doesn't, at all. Weird!

I think once you start to scroll a bit you realize it's not, but the bit above the fold definitely looked like a domain squat.

I initially didn't notice that there was a "fold"!

Oh wow, I wonder when and why they started using this design? If I saw this without already knowing about TrueCar I would have immediately closed the tab.

Yeah, it's mostly the top banner that's the problem. With the large stock image that may or may not be about buying a car and the set of links that are sort of relevant to what you want. Scrolling further, the content looks more legitimate. Had I not just read that article, I wouldn't have gone beyond the top banner.

I think their most common channels are cars.overstock.com, as well as americanexpress.com partnerships, you wouldn't be actually visiting truecar.com.

And the "trusted brands" links just before the fold looks a lot like the end of a page (probably because of the small font and gray colors).

On the first visit I didn't even realize I could scroll down, until someone mentioned there was more genuine-looking content further down.

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