A lot of the startups these days have the exact same layout of their websites, with designs similar to this: http://www.rentmonitor.com/
Do they use anything common for putting up the website? or did they just all find it an effective design and built them the same way?
I'd like to see more datapoints for why you feel this way. And besides, one reason for a "layout" decision to keep prominent action buttons front and visible could be after successful A/B testing (see this for an example - <a href="http://www.abtests.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.abtests.com/</a>)<p>I don't think any YC startup would want to piss off PG with a template found somewhere online - most YC startups do have a clear landing page with call to action items and hardly . Likewise, I am sure that was the reasoning behind this TechStars website you've shared. Of course, I would assume that since they've only crossed the demo day chasm, they probably might've borrowed some elements from online for lack of a full-time designer perhaps.
if I remember correctly, Apple did a massive human factors study along with several studies on product placement on the web. they then came up with the following:<p><a href="http://replay.waybackmachine.org/19980509035420/http://www.apple.com/" rel="nofollow">http://replay.waybackmachine.org/19980509035420/http://www.a...</a><p>You will quickly notice a resemblance. It was proven unequivocally that the right hand large photo product placement with a bar of sub items below draws the most conversions. It has been replicated since then to where it has almost become an unspoken standard.<p>If I recall correctly, Apple spent a massive amount on researching this and pretty much eliminated any other conceivable layout as drawing a higher conversion rate for product sales + recollection branding; that was the big key, not only did it drive higher sales, but it also served as identity branding as well.<p>So you will see a lot of companies, that do their research, implementing this style page, if they are a product company. You will also see a lot of off the shelf templates that emulate it. There are countless Wordpress and Drupal themes that offer this layout.<p>A lot of this info is from memory from the 90's, so take it with a grain of salt. The high level info is sound, but I may have got some of the details backwards.