ArtVersion Principal and Creative Director Goran Paun contributed to Inc. with his article, “Why Many Mid-Market Websites Feel the Same.”
In the piece, Paun examines how templates, reusable components, platform limitations, and years of incremental design decisions can gradually pull a website away from the brand it was originally meant to represent.
While modern content management systems and component-based design have helped organizations manage increasingly complex digital ecosystems, Paun argues that many companies have begun confusing consistency with differentiation. A website may remain technically functional and visually polished while losing the qualities that make the organization behind it recognizable.
The article distinguishes true design systems from collections of templates. A strong design system supports scale while preserving a brand’s visual rhythm, typography, imagery, tone, interaction patterns, and point of view. When the platform begins determining what gets designed, however, the website can start reflecting the limitations of its tools rather than the needs of its users or the character of the business.
Paun also considers how artificial intelligence is accelerating this trend. AI can generate layouts, content, navigation structures, and design concepts quickly, but it cannot independently determine what makes one organization meaningfully different from another. That distinction must come from a deeper understanding of the business, its audience, and the way it communicates and creates value.
The cost of sameness is often subtle. It appears in digital experiences that work but no longer communicate anything memorable, differentiated, or distinctly connected to the brand.
Paun concludes that modern websites should benefit from today’s improved tools and standards while retaining the intentionality of earlier, more custom design processes. A website should ultimately reflect the organization, its people, and the point of view that makes it different.