Redesigned: The new 37signals.com | Hacker News Reader

Redesigned: The new 37signals.com

37signals.com

37 pointsmoses140049 comments

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?

I hide my communicator in the closet too.

I understand, though, that Backpack is something hard to define. They should accept once and for all that it's mostly a wiki.

Reminds me of this: http://snltranscripts.jt.org/03/03jdynacorp.phtml

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

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.

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.

I see that as sarcasm, not competition though.

Speaking of sarcasm, I think you missed the parent's.

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

Thanks, and thanks:-)

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

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

Always glad to be downvoted without comment for an opinion!

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.

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.

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

you mean internet scamers?

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

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

Pretty simple. This does the trick:

body{text-align: center;}

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

They miss an line right at the end. I would have spend quite some time to make it look more of a pyramid as you have rather than leave away the final peace of the puzzle as they have. Though to be honest I would have not played with the text in that way to begin with.

That footer navigation looks like an after-thought, or a joke. I like the top of the page though: clean and simple.

Office: http://37signals.com/office

Wow their offices are gorgeous. Kind of makes me a little jealous working here at this rented out apartment startup, as superficial as that may be.

~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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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

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.)

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.

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.

There is some research that indicates using less content above the fold entices users to scroll. http://sixrevisions.com/usabilityaccessibility/10-usability-... (was also on hn, but I can't find the link)

Beyond that, it looks clean and simple, but I think they overlooked the perception that a lot of users not keen on design will perceive the site as low budget.

It depends on how compelling the content is; if a user is really engrossed, they'll be happy to scroll down pages of content. If they're not, keeping everything above the fold won't be enough.

Naturally there are limits to how much a person will scroll no matter how compelling the content. With 37signals, they probably feel their copy is engaging enough and the design offers enough varying contrast as a person scrolls down that having someone scroll that far isn't an issue.

All of their product pages feel busy and crowded to me and they still do with the redesign. Maybe it works for them, but to me it's a bit overwhelming.

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.

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.

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.

"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?

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

... Where is the pun?

i think they dedicated way too much space for the book

Agreed. Makes it look scammy.

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

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.

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

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