
Redesign of MailChimp - sgallant
http://mailchimp.com/
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ComputerGuru
I liked the old site A LOT better. This one seems slightly amateurish and too
artsy. Why a big blue hue on everything? This isn't art class, and we don't
need to see their creative side.

Show me a cute monkey, show me emails.... Don't drown me in blue!

I'm looking at the site on a 1680X1050 display, and I cannot see WHAT the site
is about... It did not occur to me to scroll down, because it seems to "end"
at the fold, what with the boxes that typically precede the footer being there
and all. No one looking at the site will have _any_ clue what MailChimp is or
does. Their logo doesn't appear above the fold, the word "email" doesn't even
appear above the fold! I don't know what they think they did!

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oneplusone
They sacrificed a TON of usability in order to become this artsy. I am not
sure why since art has nothing to do with email--especially not business
email.

The worse example of this is their feature tour. It is actually very painful
to read now with way too much space wasted on illustration that contribute
nothing. I couldn't find a single screenshot of the app.

I sure hope they are split testing this.

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prawn
I think artsy is the wrong word. It's just more muted, pastel and common.

As of my check, there is a giant chimp mascot on the front page, so they might
have changed that, but the rest just looks like 50% of design shop redesigns
from the last 3-4 years.

The massive title on the home page is "Still free, just bigger." Still free
what? Spell it out for people.

I, like almost everyone commenting here, preferred the older design and
personally would've run with tweaking that for the next 2-3 years rather than
pushing out a redesign for the sake of it.

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patio11
I am agnostic on which will work better for the business, but I have an
emotional connection with Chimpy. Chimpy is so instantly lovable that my
mother can recall, two years later, that my B2B mail service provider is "the
one with Chimpy." I have a Chimpy t-shirt that my girlfriend _specifically
requests I wear_.

I am not a designer or a brand guy, and I'm willing to be convinced by an A/B
test showing Faceless Corporate stomps all over Chimpy... but crkey, I would
think long and hard about giving him up.

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limedaring
I believe I have the same Chimpy tee-shirt (grey AA?) which is one of my
favorite teeshirts ever in terms of design and comfort. Such a great mascot,
and instantly recognizable as Mailchimp. Are they giving him up for good?

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hkuo
Screenshot of previous design for comparison: <http://i.imgur.com/aeKr8.jpg>

I agree with the general sentiment here. I'm baffled and confused why they
made this change. The reason I happened to have a screenshot is because I keep
a folder of images of sites I think work exceptionally well. They lost both
their usability as well as their humanity. That's a double whammy. I'd love to
see a post from them explaining the redesign and any results that may come
from this.

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flyosity
I heard they drastically downplayed their well-known chimp branding and color
palette because they'll soon be making a big play into a white-labeled
offering which will be totally without branding and customizable. This site
redesign is the middle ground to acclimate existing customers to the big
change before they roll out the updated app with white-labeling offered.

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hkuo
I'm not sure what the connection is between white-labeling a product and
rebranding oneself, if white-labeling is essentially stripping the product of
the brand to be replaced by the brand of the customer.

Unless it's simply to appeal more to a new set of customers, particularly ad
or PR agencies, which is a totally legitimate reason for this rebrand. But
even in that light, I prefer the previous site, which instills a no-nonsense
level of trust.

But this is just my opinion on the brand aspect of the redesign. I think
everything else they've changed and added with the site are excellent,
particularly the resource section which feels like a library of manuals. The
customer stories in video format is a great idea too, though I was confused by
the actual videos, which simply did not get to the point of how they related
to Mailchimp, at least not as long as I watched before getting bored and
stopping the video.

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paraschopra
They should have A/B tested the new design v/s old design. It is so trivial to
do that I am amazed why companies take huge risks going with an unproven new
design.

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svnv
They do have multiple designs right now, just try to refresh the site. I'm
guessing they are keeping track of the conversion rate on each of the designs
and will change them once they have enough data points.

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joshuacc
Those don't appear to be multiple designs, but a single design which randomly
features different "stories."

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moe
They should just silently revert and pretend this never happened.

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rhizome
You know, they'd get tons of goodwill for something like that.

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reason
You could not have done a worse thing to their previous branding an image,
which I thought was pretty damn good in the first place. Nowhere on the
homepage does it tell me what MailChimp actually does. The content font is
pretty small, and hard to read many of the times. The feature and resource
pages are painful to browse. All these artsy images are absolutely
unnecessary. Even the guides themselves are actually pdf books you have to
download, formatted in artsy ways, making the entire process of searching for
help and answers really, really unpleasant. They've sacrificed tons of
usability.

I'm a bit shocked that they'd do that, personally.

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rhizome
It could have been intentional. For instance, if they saw themselves being
painted into a corner in the future, businesswise, they may want to make a
branding break with their past sooner than later. They can always foreground
the chimp, the color blue (or whatever) later.

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wdewind
There seems to be a trend in design the last few months (GAP, American
Apparel, NBCUniversal the other day) and now MailChimp joins the ranks of
people who throw out existing, awesome brands. The monkey is still somewhat
present on the page, but this is really a downgrade from the old page. It
definitely doesn't look good, and it completely disregards all the brand
equity they've built up. It's too bad, because they had a great brand that I
really responded to, even though I wasn't even a customer (I just realized I
have recommended the service multiple times without even using it).

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antidaily
I don't mind the design but how about a sentence near the top to new visitors
know what MailChimp is. (I see the video further down the page)

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malbiniak
Is it fair to assume that the "Powered by Happy Cog Hosting" implies Happy Cog
was behind the redesign? Potentially irrelevant, but curious.

Regardless, I agree. This seems like a step back. I'm a huge fan of Mailchimp,
their brand (well, to date), and the way they engage their users (aka
"support"). Mailchimp is known for their ease of use, but this design doesn't
reinforce that, especially the overuse of imagery (ref:
<http://mailchimp.com/features/>).

Mailchimp has been known for their transparency (ref:
<http://blog.mailchimp.com/going-freemium-one-year-later/>). I hope they share
their decision process on this, or metrics on the new design, or both.

~~~
lauterthanbombs
Happy Cog had nothing to do with the redesign. It was completed 100% in-house,
and while I'm not exactly sure what DesignLab® has in store, I think you can
expect some additional insight into the their thought/design process.

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Julianhearn
The site has certainly lost some of its quirky unique design and feel. It
looks more like a thousand other websites now, and seems to copy a lot of
37singals. I do understand they are huge now and so have to appeal to a broad
group of people, but overall it does feel a little boring and corporate.

It is certainly a safe design that will appeal, but it does appear to have
lost some of its brand appeal.

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jefe78
Cool stuff! We've used mailchimp at my old office. Aside from one hiccup that
caused our emails to be delayed, we've had a great time setting it up.

We had production ready templates in about 20 minutes! Keep up the good work
guys!

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js2
From 2008, when their current logo was designed by John Hicks -
<http://blog.mailchimp.com/new-mailchimp-logo-by-jon-hicks/>

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nhangen
Horrible - I don't know how or why, but I feel less likely to recommend the
new MC than the old. I felt the old was a good mix between Aweber and Campaign
Monitor, now they look exactly like CM, but worse.

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khangtoh
New site does not appeal to me at ALL.. I like the old site a loooooot more.

Why did they lose the Chimp? I don't get that. They literally built their
brand around the "Chimp". They've lost their identity (the chimp) ;P

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kaib
At least I can still get the old site at (note the www):
<http://www.mailchimp.com>

I think the new site looks even worse when you can compare them tab to tab..

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mceachen
The internal site was hit over the head with the pastel bat, too. They should
revert their CSS changes -- the prior look was consistent and usable.

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netmau5
Design looks nice, if a little rushed, artistically but completely misses the
point of the business.

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svnv
There seems to be multiple designs, try refreshing the site to see some of the
other ones.

I don't like the new designs, when i first saw the "Designer templates" one I
actually had to check the url just to verify that I was still at mailchimp.com
and not some generic design tutorial site.

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foobarbazetc
Terrible.

The design is fine, though uninspired.

But what makes this terrible is that it is without soul.

Bring back the chimp!

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subpixel
I don't know why companies who aren't selling ads would choose a video
platform other than Vimeo or Youtube. But I do know the customer stories look
like I'm watching RealPlayer in 1998. And I'm on screamingly fast tubes in the
middle of the country.

I give the design a thumbs up, FWIW.

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ericb
I'm interested in what the rationale behind expanding the free plan is.

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rishi
wow! I love it. Looks sleek and elegant. It also doesn't look like everything
else on the web. Nice work on the branding.

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bond
Don't like it, prefer the old design...

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mbesto
"If ain't broke don't bother fixing it"

