4 ms·

The evolution of the 37signals home page

20 points by coglethorpe 18y ago

nopassrecover 18y ago
Loving the new design - the last one looked like a giant advert and I was always worried that I'd hit a placeholder page.
- unalone 18y ago
  Agreed. The old design was ugly - memorable, but it felt so cheap and sloppy. The new design is terrific - I love how many different styled sections they have to convey their information. It isn't at all repetitive.
ryanwaggoner 18y ago
One thing that's interesting to me is that they clearly view each of their changes as being an improvement, but do they have empirical data to back that up? According to this copyblogger article, it doesn't sound like they had any metrics for the first few iterations at least...perhaps things have changed. http://www.copyblogger.com/the-37-signals-approach-to-copywriting/ http://www.copyblogger.com/the-37-signals-approach-to-copywr...
- unalone 18y ago
  If you want to use metrics, that's fine. If not: well, whatever works for you, works for you. Obviously 37signals is a success, and they design on impulse. They make things that "feel good". That is a perfectly fine way to design, especially if you have experience with designing. Copyblogger is everything that's wrong with blogging. They take something that should be intricate and personal and try to turn it into a generic "writing copy" style. Is there any blogger worth anything at all that ever got advice from Copyblogger? Because when I read blogs, I go for the ones that don't sound like they're working from a stencil.
  - ryanwaggoner 18y ago
    If you want to use metrics, that's fine. If not: well, whatever works for you, works for you. Obviously 37signals is a success, and they design on impulse. Is 37signals a success because they design on impulse, or in spite of it? I'm sorry, but I have yet to hear a solid argument that ignoring easy-to-capture metrics is better business. I'm not talking about anything esoteric, I'm talking about core business metrics, like the number of people who sign up for your service. If you implement a new design "on impulse" and your signups drop by 90%, your impulse was wrong, no matter how much you like the design or how good it feels to you. Even if you're still profitable after the drop (and thus "a success"), that doesn't mean that you made the right decision.
    - unalone 18y ago
      I'm sorry, but I have yet to hear a solid argument that ignoring easy-to-capture metrics is better business. I'm not talking about anything esoteric, I'm talking about core business metrics, like the number of people who sign up for your service. That's because a lot of people, namely the intuitive sort, don't track that stuff enough for there to be a good counterargument. That said: intuition has long been a part of design. Architects don't design buildings according to a numbers game: there's a part of the process that's wholly creative. Obviously, artists don't rely on metrics. They go with their gut. Numbers can show some things, but not always. Would you say that Rotten Tomatoes, by being fair and balanced, is really showing us the best movies? Is Toy Story 2 the best movie ever made? According to their reviews it is. According to ticket sales Titanic is the best movie ever. Are either of those metrics true? If I make a movie expressly intending to score better numbers than those movies, am I doing justice to a movie? Get rid of this "right decision" argument. Past a very basic point, that's all subjective. There is certainly an objective layer design, but past that it's a matter of "like" and "don't like." The argument is like the Mac versus Linux argument, where one side says they "feel" better and the other side brings up numbers. The numbers are accurate, but to assume that the other side has no argument merely because they base opinions on intuition is stupid. (By the way: there's more to a business than number of users. I'd rather have a site that had a very bright, small userbase than a site with a lot of users that I personally didn't like. Hacker News versus Digg, for instance.)
frisco 18y ago
"Remember the eight-second rule. Consumers have eight seconds worth of patience while waiting for your pages to load. This is especially true for home pages. It's like the restaurant business mantra: Don't keep them waiting, or they'll leave and never return." - 37s manifesto. Wow. Now for Google a 500ms -- half a second-- lag for twice as many results per page means a 20% drop in traffic.

20 points by coglethorpe 18y ago

Loving the new design - the last one looked like a giant advert and I was always worried that I'd hit a placeholder page.

unalone 18y ago
Agreed. The old design was ugly - memorable, but it felt so cheap and sloppy. The new design is terrific - I love how many different styled sections they have to convey their information. It isn't at all repetitive.

ryanwaggoner 18y ago

One thing that's interesting to me is that they clearly view each of their changes as being an improvement, but do they have empirical data to back that up? According to this copyblogger article, it doesn't sound like they had any metrics for the first few iterations at least...perhaps things have changed. http://www.copyblogger.com/the-37-signals-approach-to-copywriting/ http://www.copyblogger.com/the-37-signals-approach-to-copywr...

unalone 18y ago
If you want to use metrics, that's fine. If not: well, whatever works for you, works for you. Obviously 37signals is a success, and they design on impulse. They make things that "feel good". That is a perfectly fine way to design, especially if you have experience with designing. Copyblogger is everything that's wrong with blogging. They take something that should be intricate and personal and try to turn it into a generic "writing copy" style. Is there any blogger worth anything at all that ever got advice from Copyblogger? Because when I read blogs, I go for the ones that don't sound like they're working from a stencil.
- ryanwaggoner 18y ago
  If you want to use metrics, that's fine. If not: well, whatever works for you, works for you. Obviously 37signals is a success, and they design on impulse. Is 37signals a success because they design on impulse, or in spite of it? I'm sorry, but I have yet to hear a solid argument that ignoring easy-to-capture metrics is better business. I'm not talking about anything esoteric, I'm talking about core business metrics, like the number of people who sign up for your service. If you implement a new design "on impulse" and your signups drop by 90%, your impulse was wrong, no matter how much you like the design or how good it feels to you. Even if you're still profitable after the drop (and thus "a success"), that doesn't mean that you made the right decision.
  - unalone 18y ago
    I'm sorry, but I have yet to hear a solid argument that ignoring easy-to-capture metrics is better business. I'm not talking about anything esoteric, I'm talking about core business metrics, like the number of people who sign up for your service. That's because a lot of people, namely the intuitive sort, don't track that stuff enough for there to be a good counterargument. That said: intuition has long been a part of design. Architects don't design buildings according to a numbers game: there's a part of the process that's wholly creative. Obviously, artists don't rely on metrics. They go with their gut. Numbers can show some things, but not always. Would you say that Rotten Tomatoes, by being fair and balanced, is really showing us the best movies? Is Toy Story 2 the best movie ever made? According to their reviews it is. According to ticket sales Titanic is the best movie ever. Are either of those metrics true? If I make a movie expressly intending to score better numbers than those movies, am I doing justice to a movie? Get rid of this "right decision" argument. Past a very basic point, that's all subjective. There is certainly an objective layer design, but past that it's a matter of "like" and "don't like." The argument is like the Mac versus Linux argument, where one side says they "feel" better and the other side brings up numbers. The numbers are accurate, but to assume that the other side has no argument merely because they base opinions on intuition is stupid. (By the way: there's more to a business than number of users. I'd rather have a site that had a very bright, small userbase than a site with a lot of users that I personally didn't like. Hacker News versus Digg, for instance.)

frisco 18y ago

"Remember the eight-second rule. Consumers have eight seconds worth of patience while waiting for your pages to load. This is especially true for home pages. It's like the restaurant business mantra: Don't keep them waiting, or they'll leave and never return." - 37s manifesto. Wow. Now for Google a 500ms -- half a second-- lag for twice as many results per page means a 20% drop in traffic.