

Redesigned: The new 37signals.com - moses1400
http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2596-redesigned-the-new-37signalscom

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zach
I always enjoy 37signals' copy, but the one that feels a little odd is
"Backpack is like a beautifully organized closet for your internal
communications."

So... it's a backpack that's like a closet, but a beautifully-organized one.
And my internal communications go in this closet. Huh.

Anyone else find that a little funky?

~~~
dangrover
Reminds me of this: <http://snltranscripts.jt.org/03/03jdynacorp.phtml>

"DynaCorp. The Kangaroo Rat of the Billiard Room. "

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hkuo
I kind of prefer their previous design actually, though I'm sure they put
plenty of thought and research into the new one.

One thing I find awkward are the rollovers of the 4 buttons with the red arrow
pointing me up to read the related description. I found it unnatural for me to
look at the buttons, rollover one, and then look up to read the description,
and then look back down, rollover another button, and then look back up for
the description. My eyes kept going down, then up, then down, then up.

One option I might rather have seen was having the buttons flip around
revealing the simple description, while keeping the more detailed description
above, perhaps allowing room for screenshots of the products above.

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davidw
They're just trying to distance themselves from these guys:
<http://www.73primenumbers.com/> who have taken "do less" and "simplicity" to
places where not even 37 signals dares to tread.

~~~
maukdaddy
HAHA thanks for that link. Fantastic bit of parody/sarcasm!

~~~
davidw
Thanks, and thanks:-)

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dmix
If you want to see the old design, this site is still using it:
<http://startupschool.com.au/>

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johns
I like this design, especially for a company page. It actually feels like a
print magazine ad that I would actually stop and read.

~~~
johns
Always glad to be downvoted without comment for an opinion!

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bradhe
I love this design. It really resonates with me! The whole thing feels a bit
like a slide deck which I like. If you scroll correctly you get a nice bit of
information per "slide" but you don't actually click through a silly slide
deck. One of the arguments I'm reading is "too much scrolling" but I think
that's incorrect -- the design makes you _want_ to scroll and the argument
against scrolling is that people don't want to/won't do so!

All in all I think this model could be a really effective way of presenting
to-the-point, minimalistic information.

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stackthat
New website looks like Scammy Ebook 2.0, you know those yellowish
scam/drity/spam marketing ebook sale websites, somehow that's what it reminded
me.

~~~
zacharyz
Yep, and that is probably intentional. It is called Long Copy and those
internet marketers use it because it works.

~~~
stackthat
Does it? Since when? Do you think 37Signals potential customers feel good
about feel-scammy-website? Maybe casual average-joe might like it (Only God
knows why) but I don't think their potential clients would

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edw519

      It must have taken quite a
         bit of thought to get
            the links at the
              foot of the
                page to
                 line
                  up

~~~
tbrooks
Pretty simple. This does the trick:

body{text-align: center;}

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lfittl
He's talking about the width of the links in the footer (they are arranged so
every line is shorter than the one before)

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antidaily
Office: <http://37signals.com/office>

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tomlin
~19 employees in this warehouse-like office space?

Seems to be a little less than indulgent. Not the sort of office space you'd
expect after hearing countless "lean & trim company" narratives.

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netmau5
I liked the last design much more. The colored quotes over each product gave a
nice personality to the site; compared with the old one, I feel like I'm
looking at a black & white channel now: less color = less intrigue/excitement.
The font-size inconsistency creates noise in the organization and message of
the content.

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hailpixel
I quite like it. I love the movement towards simple, playful interface with
some nice content to chew on without having to dive in. It seems they are
treating 37signals.com more as a brand destination then a product launch
point, which I think fits.

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mortuus
Multiple comments have suggested that this page has elements reminiscent of
scam-related web pages, of the type where you are clearly being sold to.

Warning flags that come to mind: overuse of large fonts, very long pages with
repetition of content within the page, copy clearly designed to sell (with
particular emphasis on benefits to you the reader), big red arrows that guide
your attention

I consistently warn family members to be wary of claims made by organizations
using these tactics. The reason I do that is because they seem to work.

Does anyone have access to data or a link to research on these tactics?

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mcyger
I would have loved to see the new website design while I was eating lunch
today, but it crashed my iPad Safari browser -- TWICE!

The first time I visited the site, my browser crashed. I didn't think much of
it. Hey, things crash. I started Safari back up and I was still on the 37
blogs site (where I was before the crash, when I clicked on the 37 Signals
link). Cool, I thought. Safari remembered my place and all my other windows
were saved too.

But the second time I clicked through to visit 37 Signals Safari crashed and
lost all of my other window information. That's a bummer because I still had
some stories I wanted to read.

37 Signals, please test on an iPad.

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Tyrannosaurs
I don't want to tell Jason how to do his job, hell, he knows more about this
stuff than I do but I'm really not liking it.

Too much scrolling (which I thought was established as bad in Web Design 101
though I'd love to hear otherwise as 37signals have ignored this for a while),
and the lower sections manage to feel crowded despite having white space in
abundance (possibly due to using fonts as large as 18.5 pts for paragraphs of
text), the font sizes seem to be almost at random section by section.

It's nice that it doesn't look like every other website but beyond slight
originality it doesn't do it for me.

~~~
hailpixel
People actually scroll a lot more nowadays. More over, people rather scroll
then click through to view content. Nielsen had a nice little alert a while
ago: <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9712a.html>

~~~
benatkin
It's nice that they see it, but shouldn't it also be grabbing their attention?
From the page you linked to:

> (Update 2010: Eyetracking shows that people allocate much less attention to
> information below the fold.)

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hailpixel
Very true. Content that appears above the fold will always have the highest
visual priority. That said, there is a myth in web design that the second
content hangs below the fold, users will ignore it. This is false, and I
thought it necessary point it out.

37 signals' page encapsulates this well: the important stuff is front and
center (their products) and other good information is stacked hierarchically
below it.

~~~
benatkin
I was thinking there ought to be testimonials above the fold. I think there
might have been with there old design.

I didn't notice until now, but there aren't any customer testimonials about
their SaaS products. There are only a couple about their books.

This seems like a bold move. Maybe they're onto something. Perhaps most people
are tired of seeing testimonials, and that relying entirely on _organic_ word-
of-mouth is a better strategy.

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thought_alarm
The new site crashes hard with Safari on iPad 3.2.

If I manually type in 37signals.com it loads fine, but if I follow a link to
37signals.com, either from that blog posting or from Google, it crashes Safari
every time.

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antidaily
Huge improvement over the last iteration IMO, which felt packed with too much
_stuff_. It was also hard to find the SvN blog link in the old version.

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bretthellman
Clean, 'simple' and fast. The only part I'm not loving is how when you mouse
over the product the arrow and description change, that feels unnatural. I do
love how the design embraces the fact that users scroll down websites to read
content. that part worked nicely. Lastly, what's the call to action, "visit
the site" what good is that? What about "get started today"... something to
worth AB testing.

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points
"A better way to work with the people you work with every day."

Is it me, or does that scan really badly. Is it even grammatically valid?

~~~
shadowsun7
I believe, good sir, that this is a pun. The 37signals team is known for being
very anal about their copywriting.

~~~
djacobs
... Where is the pun?

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vaksel
i think they dedicated way too much space for the book

~~~
points
Agreed. Makes it look scammy.

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dgabriel
The font looks terrible and jagged to me on Chrome. It seems almost amateurish
as a result.

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apgwoz
This reminds me of parrotsecrets.com, and the other ebook promo sites out
there that bombard you with content to sell you something. Though, this is
much more appealing visually.

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run4yourlives
Interestingly, the "new design" looks a lot like the one the "old design"
replaced. Obviously some background A/B testing winning out here.

