Most of what you see on the internet is not unique; it hasn't always been like this but since the advent of drag-and-drop and no-code website build tools there's been quite the convergence in style. Back when virtually every website was built on WordPress, you could smell from a mile away the same standard template being used on two different sites. Not much has changed in 2025.
Basically every SaaS today has the same landing page
It's likely derived from some Framer/Webflow template; you know the one I'm talking about. A dark mode website and the headline text has a subtle white-to-silver gradient. Everything has a interactive glow/backlight effect and there's a black hole or space related thing as the main illustration. There might be deviations that change some colors or structure but the main formula is same for all of them.
Don't get me wrong, this style looks really cool. Everything is really modern looking and there's a nice blurred fade in animation when elements scroll into view. It follows the conventions of high-converting websites but it's played out and totally forgettable. Worse, it can get you confused with other brands.
Looking "cool" isn't effective branding
I believe Resend pioneered this, as of now, unnamed style of design. At launch it was fresh, exciting, and new. It certainly stuck with me since it was so well polished and I hadn't seen something like that before.
Later, when the creators of Untitled AI SaaS #57 create their marketing site using that style, they probably hope their potential user base will say, "oh wow this is awesome, I can't wait to try Untitled AI SaaS #57." Instead they say, "Hey this is just like Resend and everyone else."
Unless it's their first time on the internet, users aren't going to be compelled by that design. They've seen it dozens if not hundreds of times already and the chances of them associating that design with your brand is effectively 0%.
The Shadcn-ification of everything
In the past few years Shadcn/ui has become the go to component library for a large share of developers in the React and Tailwind space. It's been so successful for two main reasons:
- It has a built-in design system that's easy to use and customize. You can simply add any component from the Shadcn registry to your app and it just works basically without any configuration. It even has built in light/dark mode styles.
- You have total control over the components. The component primitives from Radix are installed as dependencies but otherwise the component code is completely yours to play around with. You can even swap out the Radix primitives for React Aria, Headless UI, Base UI, or any other headless component library.
Now those are great reasons to use Shadcn except the majority of developers (or vibe coders) don't take advantage of any of that at all! Shadcn's out-of-the-box style is based on Vercel's design system. If you just slap all those components in with the default design system you end up looking just like Vercel.
Again, don't get me wrong, Vercel has a very effective and clean design system, but when thousands of apps are using the exact same UI they become totally indistinguishable from each other. There are even free tools on the web that were created to easily adjust the Shadcn design system so there's no excuse to have a default theme Shadcn app.
LLMs can create ok UIs that mostly work
With the rise of AI codegen tools anyone can create a UI that's usually somewhere between meh and good. What I have not seen (and I'm not really convinced I'll ever see) is a truly great UI generated by AI. This is likely because:
- Truly great UI is pretty rare so most AI models are mostly trained on "good UI" or worse.
- Human taste is the limiting factor which LLMs lack the capacity for; they can only aggregate and curate.
- AI can't see, at least the way you and I do, which results in many oversights.
Similar to the problem I talked about above, AI tends to just do what everyone else does; which is to create derivative and boilerplate-y websites and apps. There's an incredible opportunity to stand out here since most of what the market is putting out is, as the kids would call, "mid".
There's incredible opportunity to build something that stands out
I'm not saying you should create something intentionally ugly in order to stand out (I'm also not not saying that). But maybe you should take more risks. You might create something that totally stinks or you might create the next website/app that everyone else wants to copy.
The boring UX stuff matters more than you think
Most users are just trying to figure out what your product does and whether it's worth their time. That means your copy, your information architecture, and the user flow matter as much as (or more than) visual aesthetics. While there is quite a bit of research that says better looking software makes users perceive it to work better, long term user satisfaction starts with the hard work of relentlessly polishing the user experience.
Linear didn't become the gold standard of the design community because they had the most innovative UI style. They got there because they made a project management tool that's nice to use, and their clean design is ancillary support to that goal.
Stop creating for other designers and developers
Your users don't care about your design system or which frameworks or libraries you're using. That's not to say none of that matters but it only matters insofar as you're effectively creating something memorable and useful for the user.
The opportunity is real. While everyone else is busy copying each other's homework, you can build something that people actually remember and want to use. The goal isn't to be different for the sake of being different. The goal is to be better.