What is 2008 about this website? I don't know any websites from 2008 that look like that. What do current websites have which websites from 2008 don't?
When I visit YouTube, Facebook or Twitter, they seem extremely "busy", overrun with ads, and rather ugly, but we are used to them. I am not sure it's so bad to have a clean layout. But I am open to constructive criticism.
I get where they're coming from. It kinda reminds me of an old-school iOS app (pre-iOS 7, before everything went all flat design). The skeumorphism, the arrows in the menu, the big black borders on the menu. The layout, styling and font kind of reminds me of the jQuery era (but of course, I was primed to look for this stuff by the GP comment).
None of what I'm saying is criticism BTW. Just observation.
I don't know about the 2008 stuff but I found the site to be pretty broken, as in things clearly not working and the code blowing up. The design is very busy on desktop; I suspect your "clean design" is what you see on mobile. The desktop site is packed to the gills and every page has multiple things animating and bouncing at me. Let me make it clear--this site is busier than most, not cleaner.
On desktop, it's pretty easy to open one of the menus on the top and then have it fail to close. Since the site disables the scrollbars while a menu is open, it breaks the site until you figure out the magic spot to move the mouse to make the menu close again. The magic spot doesn't seem to be in the same place every time. Seems buggy. I spent most of my time on this site with one of the menus open, unable to scroll down and see beyond the first page.
The worst part? The links in the menus don't work. A peek in the source code suggests they are supposed to be links, but clicking them doesn't do anything because they're just <div>s (not real <a> links) and the click event handler simply calls preventDefault (QTools.js line 107). That finicky navbar nearly ruins the entire site. I'm almost entirely unable to navigate around. This site is, unfortunately, pretty broken on desktop Chrome. Test your site on desktop in addition to mobile.
I got the site to hit an explicit debugger breakpoint in Q.js line 10293 just by clicking around the top menu buttons. The author of that code didn't bother writing an exception handler, they just had it trigger the debugger.
I do find it offputting; the site definitely has the feel of "a programmer hacked this together without any input from a designer." The massive drop shadow from the embedded videos actually covers up some of the text on desktop. The font is VERY thin--make sure to check your site on Windows and not just macOS. More generally: hire a designer. Programmer designs stick out in a bad way, and users seeing a broken marketing site will assume the product is broken, too. I certainly do.
I want to fix what you're talking about, but I was not able to reproduce the bug. Can you please tell me how you got the menu to not close, for instance? Also, clicking on the menu items clearly opens the page they're linked to. I couldn't get it to not do that.
1. Install Chrome for Windows from the Google website. As of today, that version is 114.0.5735.199 (Official Build) (64-bit). I am testing on Windows 11 and I used a fresh install of Chrome on a machine that has never had Chrome before. This machine has a standard 60Hz display which may matter for my theory at the end.
2. Go to qbix.com.
3. Hover the mouse over "Communities". Now hover over its submenu items. Observe that they do not highlight on rollover like they're supposed to, and clicking on them does not do anything.
4. Now quickly move the mouse outside of the menu. Observe that the mouse escapes the menu, and the menu does not close. Move the mouse around the rest of the page. Observe that the menu continues to stay open. Observe that you can't scroll the page. In this state, the site is unusable.
5. Move the mouse back inside the menu, then slowly move the mouse across the edge of the menu. Observe that now the menu closes.
I have reproduced the same in Edge and Vivaldi; the issues appear to manifest in Chromium-based browsers on Windows. I tested on macOS and iOS and the issue does not show up there. I can provide a screen capture if needed. Without looking deeper, I wonder if this page is trying to use JavaScript to close the menu based on a mouse event that it misses when you move the mouse too fast. I wonder if the entire navbar is implemented in JavaScript instead of a modern CSS-only technique with regular links.
I've tried it again on both Windows 10 and Windows Server 2022 and it reproduces every time. I have yet to see the site working properly on Windows Chromium.
Please try creating a fresh cloud Windows instance rather than using your usual computer so you can be sure you are seeing what a fresh user on a new computer would see. I have done so--this reproduces in the preinstalled Edge on a brand new c6a.large Windows Server 2022 instance in AWS. I can provide a click-by-click screen capture starting at the AWS Management Console if desired--I've found this is a good way to prove bug reports to companies and demonstrate that it has nothing to do with my computer.
Here is the screen capture. This video shows the creation of a fresh Windows instance in AWS EC2 and then the reproduction of all of the above issues in that fresh instance. Follow my exact clicks and you will see it, too.
It's just rough around the edges. Nothing that isn't fixable. Nothing that stops you using the site. It just looks a little bit dated - things like the gradients on the menus, a trail behind the mouse pointer.
It would definitely be more appealing to the masses if it was brought more in line with a more minimalist 2023 aesthetic, IMO.
Since you ask, I'll be honest. I don't think your layout is clean at all:
- There's a confetti effect following my cursor around
- There are constant animations playing everywhere, even over video embeds
- A lot of the spacing is uncomfortably tight
- Shadow effects overlap other content
- There are some 30 menu options, buttons everywhere, many video embeds that I'm supposed to listen to?
None of this is enticing me to consume any content on your website. I'm feeling uncomfortable even trying to browse the site to find out what your product is. I've learned that a significant portion of the web runs on PHP and that you have an app and a token of some sort? And you're looking for investors? I'm sure there's very cool ideas in here, but I'm lost in the vast amount of information with inscrutable organisation.
All that aside, there's a big reason that a lot of landing pages look similar: it works. First impressions count for a lot.
When I visit YouTube, Facebook or Twitter, they seem extremely "busy", overrun with ads, and rather ugly, but we are used to them. I am not sure it's so bad to have a clean layout. But I am open to constructive criticism.