Explaining the design behind the world's most popular websites

Website

Designer & Writer

2 team members

Sites Explained is a curated directory unpacking the marketing and UX psychology powering the site's of exciting companies and industry giants. A passion project of mine sharing the 'why it works.'

The challenge

After two years working with startups, we found most teams wing it. Without much UX experience, they copy competitor sites and hope for the best. Our readers needed a way to learn design and marketing that felt simple enough to act on.
We aimed to balance quick, scannable reads with enough depth to be useful. Each article took about 4 hours to research, write, and design—fun but not sustainable. No automation meant it became a blocker fast.
By mid-2025, I started building tools to automate the workflow and reduce reliance on Framer. No native auth also pushed me to start learning to code (again) in 2024, so we could own more of the experience.

Built v1 using Framer for the frontend and Notion as the CMS to manage and schedule articles—Framer's native CMS didn't cut it.
Focused on scannable UX: each article starts with a snapshot and expands into a 2–3 minute read.
Pulled SEMrush data manually to support analysis, with plans to automate it via API.
Wrote content with Cam using a shared format to keep structure and tone consistent. About 75% of each article was written manually, with AI assisting on research and formatting.
Used Outseta for authentication, but the cost was too high. Planning to rebuild with a free solution using Next.js.

Reached 30,000+ organic page views within the first few months.
Designers, founders, and marketers praised the structure and tone—mainly through LinkedIn and Twitter.
Improved my writing, email marketing, and ability to design for clarity over aesthetics. Also inspired my move into full-stack development to automate and own more of the platform.