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Comment by adamhowell | Hacker News Reader

I can't agree with the 37signals.com screenshot being described as "the user shouldn’t feel too overwhlemed. Everything has a bit of space and isn’t fighting for attention."

As I've been designing the marketing pages of my app I've drawn lots of inspiration from lots of different sites. And everytime I bring up one of theirs, I'm struck by how cramped and jam-packed full of extraneous information they are now.

If you compare http://basecamphq.com to something like, say, http://checkoutapp.com/ or http://sifterapp.com/ it just comes across as too much.

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I have a feeling that 37signals has tested that page extensively. It may be that they convert better when the page designed that way.

I personally like the sparseness of www.checkoutapp.com, but that doesn't mean that 37signals' page is "too cramped." The only way to know is to test.

Look at Amazon. They have been through so many iterations and have tested so much and their pages are still too cramped for my taste. It probably make good business sense for them to design them that way.

Yeah, I'm sure you're right, and that's a post of theirs I would really love to see. Screenshots of several different versions of their homepages, from cramped to sparse, and how they all converted.

I remember several years ago when 37 Signals abruptly changed their web site, The issue came up in their blog comments and was covered by Copyblogger here: http://www.copyblogger.com/the-37-signals-approach-to-copywr...

Bottom line: 37 Signals didn't do any testing. I know they've reported headline testing results, so maybe they've changed their practices.

(We make checkoutapp.com)

We test, but we always put emotional arguments ("it looks better") above scientific data when it comes down to design. It's impossible to prove what gives better results in the long-term, but we would hate putting something online that doesn't look good to us. One thing I can really notice is that customers always tell us that our website/style stood out while they were evaluating the product, so it seems to work well for us.

Either design can be aesthetically pleasing or it can serve the business goals, it rarely satisfies both.

Case in point - Basecamp bounce rate 25% http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/basecamphq.com

Checkout app bounce rate 50% http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/checkoutapp.com

(I admit Alexa isn't accurate but for comparing websites in relative terms, it is good enough)

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