There seems to be a danger of designers designing pages to be attractive for other designers. None of the pages were particularly attractive to me (non-designer). Attractive to me would be something that indicates interesting content. For designers, typography and graphics are interesting content.

It's really not about what you as an individual find attractive, but what the vast majority of people find attractive. We all have our preferences, and design is a somewhat subjective thing, but the best designs will resonate with the highest percentage of people, and aid in the functionality of the site too.

I don't see the point of your remark. Are you saying I am not qualified to have an opinion on web design? No, we should let the "experts" decide, never think for ourselves. The experts are always right.

How do you know the designs given appeal to the majority of people? And not just appeal as in "I'd like to frame it and stick it to my wall" but as in "I'd like to use this".

Yeah I was thinking that as I scrolled through.. Yeah they're pretty in a "here's 25 cool designs" blog post, but I can't honestly say I would be able to look at these designs for any substantial amount of time, and they certainly wouldn't be acceptable for any kind of SaaS sites.

Absolutely gorgeous. I want more.

God, but it makes me feel bad. My attempts as design are pitiful compared to some of those (most of those... all of those?) examples. Gives me a lot to look up to, and much to aspire to.

How do clients measure the business effectiveness of their website designs?

Dirty little secret: overwhelmingly, they don't.

Clients don't measure the business effectiveness of their websites as such, they measure lead-generation and conversion.

Most of the sites in that SM article don't have business objectives other than to showcase great design.

This is one of my... frustrations with the online design community. I wish there was a site devoted to the Mailchimps of the world: applications that do things for people and look great doing it.

The problem is that most of those sites are not interesting from an aesthetic point of view.

And that is the problem with SM IMHO. It talks about functionality and business and trends and optimization but uses only eye candy to prove it's point.

Don't get me wrong. I am all for good looking design, but it's quite obvious that unless you are able to sell your style. Style isn't part of what ultimately makes a business successful.

Tell that to Apple.

I just look at YC companies for great functional simple design

A/B Split Testing and Funnel Analysis are two effective ways. Gathering feedback works in many cases too.

I was expecting some mention of CSS text shadows.

"reliable support of Web standards in the major browsers."

Ha Ha Ha...