Clever ways to get web design examples and inspiration

Posted on August 31, 2013 in Startups, Web Design

All web designers/developers check out other websites for inspiration at some point in their design process. You can find what you’re after in a number of different ways:

Well known ways

  • Look at sites that stick out in your mind. For me this includes sites like AirBnB, Harvest, Ballpark, etc.
  • Search for ‘top x’ lists. Example.
  • Look in the top forums and communities, for example reddit.com/r/web_design, Hacker News, Forrst, Css Tricks, etc.

Some better ways

Make the most of Google queries to really find what you’re after.

If I’m searching for a specific type of page that will have a common URL, then I’ll type in to google something like:

  • inurl:’/plans-pricing/’
  • inurl:’/pricing/’
  • inurl:’/tour/’

Use your initiative to find other things such as blogs (inurl:’/blog/’) or perhaps examples of registration pages (inurl:’/signup’).

I also like using exact match queries by putting quotes around my search terms. For example, I am developing a SaaS pricing page and would like to see examples of other pages serving the same purpose. It’s pretty difficult to generate a list of subscription SaaS sites right off the bat, but I know that many of the SaaS that I’m after will be offering ‘plans’ of some sort. I can deduce that there will be a section that explains these plans and therefore a common section title across sites. Here’s what I searched for in this case:

“all plans include”

Yeah, that’s literally it. It gave me a great list of sites to check out to see how they’ve laid out their description of plans that they offer.

You can extend this method to literally any other search term. Perhaps another boring example, but you could do the same sort of thing with “plans and pricing”. Type that into Google (with the quotes!) and check out the list of SaaS-style pricing pages you get.

Got any other good ways to get inspiration? Please let me know by leaving a comment!

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