Spend enough time browsing modern software websites and a pattern emerges.
Large headline.
Small eyebrow text.
Rounded cards.
Soft gradient.
A floating screenshot.
Maybe a 3D object.
Maybe a person smiling at a laptop.
The details change. The structure often doesn't.
There are good reasons for this.
There are also interesting consequences.
Templates are efficient
Design systems have made the web dramatically easier to build.
A small team can create a coherent interface without designing every component from scratch.
That's a huge improvement.
But efficiency has a tendency to become sameness.
Once a particular structure converts well, it gets copied.
Then it becomes familiar.
Then familiarity becomes the default.
Familiarity is useful
This isn't necessarily a criticism.
Users learn patterns.
A button looks like a button. Navigation stays near the top. Cards group related information.
Standardisation reduces cognitive load.
The problem begins when the visual language becomes so predictable that products stop communicating what makes them different.
A project-management tool and a music app can end up speaking almost the same visual language.
The product gets buried under the category.
The pressure to look credible
There is also a business reason for visual sameness.
Companies want to look trustworthy.
Design trends become shortcuts for credibility.
If every successful startup has a certain typeface, spacing system and landing-page structure, using the same ingredients feels safe.
The result is a strange loop.
Everyone copies what looks successful, which makes the style common, which makes the style look successful because everyone is using it.
Breaking the pattern
The answer isn't to make every website weird.
That would become another template.
The more interesting approach is to start with the product.
What does it actually do?
What does it feel like?
What is unusual about it?
Then let the interface follow those answers.
Sometimes that produces something minimal.
Sometimes it produces something chaotic.
Sometimes it produces a website that looks nothing like the competition.
The useful question isn't “Does this look modern?”
It's “Does this look like itself?”
That's a much harder question.
It's also more interesting.