

The evolution of the 37signals home page - coglethorpe
http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1648-the-evolution-of-the-37signals-home-page

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ryanwaggoner
One thing that's interesting to me is that they clearly view each of their
changes as being an improvement, but do they have empirical data to back that
up? According to this copyblogger article, it doesn't sound like they had any
metrics for the first few iterations at least...perhaps things have changed.

[http://www.copyblogger.com/the-37-signals-approach-to-
copywr...](http://www.copyblogger.com/the-37-signals-approach-to-copywriting/)

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unalone
If you want to use metrics, that's fine. If not: well, whatever works for you,
works for you. Obviously 37signals is a success, and they design on impulse.
They make things that "feel good". That is a perfectly fine way to design,
especially if you have experience with designing.

Copyblogger is everything that's wrong with blogging. They take something that
should be intricate and personal and try to turn it into a generic "writing
copy" style. Is there any blogger worth anything at all that ever got advice
from Copyblogger? Because when I read blogs, I go for the ones that _don't_
sound like they're working from a stencil.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
_If you want to use metrics, that's fine. If not: well, whatever works for
you, works for you. Obviously 37signals is a success, and they design on
impulse._

Is 37signals a success because they design on impulse, or in spite of it? I'm
sorry, but I have yet to hear a solid argument that ignoring easy-to-capture
metrics is better business. I'm not talking about anything esoteric, I'm
talking about core business metrics, like the number of people who sign up for
your service.

If you implement a new design "on impulse" and your signups drop by 90%, your
impulse was wrong, no matter how much you like the design or how good it feels
to you. Even if you're still profitable after the drop (and thus "a success"),
that doesn't mean that you made the right decision.

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unalone
_I'm sorry, but I have yet to hear a solid argument that ignoring easy-to-
capture metrics is better business. I'm not talking about anything esoteric,
I'm talking about core business metrics, like the number of people who sign up
for your service._

That's because a lot of people, namely the intuitive sort, don't track that
stuff enough for there to be a good counterargument.

That said: intuition has long been a part of design. Architects don't design
buildings according to a numbers game: there's a part of the process that's
wholly creative. Obviously, artists don't rely on metrics. They go with their
gut. Numbers can show some things, but not always. Would you say that Rotten
Tomatoes, by being fair and balanced, is really showing us the best movies? Is
Toy Story 2 the best movie ever made? According to their reviews it is.
According to ticket sales Titanic is the best movie ever. Are either of those
metrics true? If I make a movie expressly intending to score better numbers
than those movies, am I doing justice to a movie?

Get rid of this "right decision" argument. Past a very basic point, that's all
subjective. There is certainly an objective layer design, but past that it's a
matter of "like" and "don't like." The argument is like the Mac versus Linux
argument, where one side says they "feel" better and the other side brings up
numbers. The numbers are accurate, but to assume that the other side has no
argument merely because they base opinions on intuition is stupid.

(By the way: there's more to a business than number of users. I'd rather have
a site that had a very bright, small userbase than a site with a lot of users
that I personally didn't like. Hacker News versus Digg, for instance.)

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whughes
Hacker News isn't a business. It's a site. A business has to make a profit.

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unalone
But 37signals _is_ making a profit. Quite a lot of a profit. So after they're
making money, isn't it their choice whether or not to follow their gut?
Obviously the results are working for them.

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ryanwaggoner
Of course it's their choice. That doesn't mean it's the optimal choice or one
to be admired.

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unalone
Yeah, I get that. The problem is that "optimal" is misleading, because making
money isn't the only goal of opening a business.

Would you say that David Lynch is a suboptimal director? His movies aren't
enormous hits. He hasn't won for Best Movie. But those aren't his goals.
Similarly, sometimes the people developing a site have more at stake than
maximizing profits. Sometimes they want to make gorgeous web pages or gorgeous
processes. And there's no optimal procedure for that.

Some people look at it another way. The 37s team obviously treats design as a
sort of art rather than an exercise in optimization. As it happens, they make
better products (in my opinion) than the people who go the other route. So
they serve as a sort of inspiration.

That's my point. The argument is not entirely meaningful, because there are
two things happening at once, and you can measure the one but not the other.

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frisco
"Remember the eight-second rule. Consumers have eight seconds worth of
patience while waiting for your pages to load. This is especially true for
home pages. It's like the restaurant business mantra: Don't keep them waiting,
or they'll leave and never return." \- 37s manifesto.

Wow. Now for Google a 500ms -- half a second-- lag for twice as many results
per page means a 20% drop in traffic.

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nopassrecover
Loving the new design - the last one looked like a giant advert and I was
always worried that I'd hit a placeholder page.

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unalone
Agreed. The old design was _ugly_ \- memorable, but it felt so cheap and
sloppy. The new design is terrific - I love how many different styled sections
they have to convey their information. It isn't at all repetitive.

