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New Gmail un-minimalistic homepage

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35 pointszhiQ30 comments

Its not just Gmail, they started doing this with other products too. Whenever I access Google Analytics [1], even if I am already logged in, it takes me to a page with a huge picture of a person smiling where I am supposed to find a tiny button that says "Access Analytics" inorder to access my account. I can understand such marketing material for new visitors but why on earth would you force this on existing customers???

[1] http://analytics.google.com

Logically speaking: existing customers are going to spend the cognitive effort to hunt for the button. There's a reason most companies don't A/B test login screens.

(That's not to say that you shouldn't A/B test churn, but...)

I thought it was related to my multiple accounts, so im glad to see I'm not crazy. I still have no idea how that woman relates to my analytics.

I've repeated this many times and it's never a popular idea, but here goes: it's because they retain UI/UX designers on permanent staff, when they likely have actual new work about one month in twelve, from what I gather.

This isn't an attack on UI/UX people, it is only to suggest perhaps that industry would be better structured if everyone worked at agencies that recovered an employee's yearly salary in exchange for a month of their time. No pointless work generation that hurts the masses just to hit bonus targets.

I couldn't disagree more. UI/UX design sits at the intersection of business objectives and user behaviour (i.e. what the business wants / what the users want). The idea of iterating your UI one month a year is borderline suicidal.

If you're calling it "pointless work generation that hurts the masses", there must be something dysfunctional about your past experiences with UI/UX design people / processes in the organisations you've worked in.

You only get redirected to this page when you have no previous cookies, in which case you're likely either a new user (that should see a beautiful landing page) or using incognito or cleared your cookies. There's unfortunately not really a way to differentiate the two. If you signed in before and then logged out again, or if you're previous login expired, you will see the old login form.

This is incorrect. If you go to http://www.google.com/analytics/, even having just logged out from analytics with cookies present, you get the splashscreen. (Unless they're A/B testing it and you're seeing something different from me.)

Ok, I don't know anything about analytics. What I said is true for mail.google.com / gmail.com.

>You only get redirected to this page when you have no previous cookies.

Nope like I mentioned it does this even when I am logged in, so no chance of cookie clearing. However I tried it again just to be sure, no luck. Two tabs opened, the second one a few seconds after logging into the first one, still lands me on marketing page.

I found this frustrating as well; my fix for now is to bookmark https://www.google.com/analytics/web/?hl=en and go straight to there (or make a quick AlfredApp command to open it).

> Its not just Gmail, they started doing this with other products too. Whenever I access Google Analytics, ...

For what it's worth, Google Analytics had this since forever ago (quite possibly since the acquisition of Urchin). It is one of the few standalone products at Google (rather than a feature of another product, like Hangouts) which shows a marketing splash page when you're already logged in.

At least now it says "Access Analytics" (new as of a few months ago) instead of two "Login" and "Signup" buttons which both did the same thing.

I haven't seen this new Gmail landing page yet, but I'm skeptical that it'll show up for users who are already logged in.

Looks like there is a pattern -

New Google Analytics landing page - http://www.google.com/analytics/

Or Google Hangouts landing page - http://www.google.com/hangouts/

Hangouts you would expect people to be smiling and happy, that's the product.

Google Analytics though, a bigass testimonial with random people smiling is very offputting.

Google Wallet too - http://www.google.com/wallet/

I would imagine they a/b tested this quite extensively and have data that smiling people's faces cause whatever metric they are measuring to be at a better point than a plain login page. It'd be interesting to see how much.

I've noticed a quite a few landing pages going for the "large photo of generic smiling person" (usually female) concept in recent times. This page, healthcare.gov, basecamp.com, and many many others. Kind of amazing/sad (though not surprising) that your average human can be persuaded with this kind of gimmick.

Why is it sad ? It's a display of empathy. If anything, it's sad that some companies abuse it, but even as far as such manipulations go, at least this one provokes positive feelings instead of preying on people's insecurities and fears.

I always think of these things as security vulnerabilities. Right in your brain! And getting a patch out is... tricky.

That made me remember one of the earliest examples: http://www.teamviewer.com/

There was a good write-up on that from 37signals

http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2991-behind-the-scenes-ab-tes...

It's a marketing page. Would it be better to just have a login form like before? As long as Gmail itself remains minimalistic, what difference does a marketing page make?

As long as Gmail itself remains minimalistic

Gmail stopped being minimalistic a while ago...

See comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6572206

>As long as Gmail itself remains minimalistic

Unless you're using the basic HTML view for Gmail, I don't see how Gmail is minimalistic.

It got a bit better again, they dropped the top menu for calender, drive, plus etc into a non-modal popup.

Care to explain how Gmail _isn't_ minimalistic?

Compared to native email apps with excessive amounts of panes, buttons, sorters, etc., Gmail is minimalistic nirvana.

http://i.imgur.com/XiwAn8U.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/YSBK5us.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/8Acgrn1.png

http://i.imgur.com/RMg8UPY.png

Hell, even compare Gmail today to how it used to look:

http://i.imgur.com/fHQjL0n.png

The new Gmail's focus on whitespace, hiding buttons that don't do anything yet (until you check things of course), the new compose panel (with ultra-minimalistic controls and send to/from fields), Google's removal of the black bar, the auto-overflow for labels, lack of borders, lack of "containers," etc. etc. all convince me of Gmail's minimalism.

Just about the only thing that isn't minimal about it anymore is the footer.

What's with the blogspam?

After moving to outlook.com, The only thing I missed is that after I signing out of it, it takes me to a landing page with a "sign in" button and some advertisement with people smiling, instead of login screen.

looks like gmail is getting worse instead of outlook getting better in this particular aspect.

For a while now Google have been aggressively pursuing a marketing first approach to their product offerings, this is no different. The very fact Google have sneakily implemented ads disguised as emails into Gmail is a sign that Google are no longer a minimalistic company.

I think this is a case of someone making a big deal out of an obvious situation. Hardly an issue here.

This is really similar to what Google Apps have used for a few years now.

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