01 Jul 2004 | Mark said...

Cool.

Here are my thoughts -

1. The thumbnails on the front page are blurry and maybe too small to be effective. The overall size of the image is generally fine, but at the size you have it, the text becomes exteremly blurry. I'd rather see an extreme closeup of the interface in that same size window.

2. The text in the bulleted list on the right tends to run all together. I'd suggest bolding the features and keeping the description in plain text to break it up.

3. The key features list on the left gets lost because of all the text on the right. Perhaps increase the font size?

4. On the secondary pages, the menus (both bottom and top) break in Win 2000 / IE 6 / 1024 x 768 at the hyphen in "To-Do".

01 Jul 2004 | Mark said...

Actually, all the images are kind of blurry. I'm more in tune with this because I have a client who reallyharps on me about blurred images on his site.

I've found using unsharp mask in Photoshop to sharpen images after resizing works pretty well.

01 Jul 2004 | lisa said...

man-- you guys don't stop!!
i'm impressed.
kudos on your efforts!

01 Jul 2004 | Tomas said...

I dig it, I think it's a great improvement. The new design makes it easier to get an overview of what BaseCamp is about, and what it's for.

01 Jul 2004 | Ed Knittel said...

I don't find anything wrong with offering criticism towards the image quality of the screenshots - since reason #2 that Jason listed was to get screeshots right up front. Fortunately, by supplying an enlarged view of the screenshot when you click on the image does help to provide a clearer understanding.

OT: I'd like to learn know more about creating effective screenshots. I really like the idea of showing the small screenshot (but how small is too small?) and then providing a link to enlarged view of the screen. AND I like even more how it's an explanatory screen. It's great to provide such a useful context.

Overall, I think the new page is a much greater improvement over the old, and it's some good way of advertising again 37express. Well planned if you ask me. Oh, did this change, perchance, have anything to do with realising the "epicenter" of the page?

01 Jul 2004 | Keith said...

Damn Jason, you guys are full of all kinds of good stuff today.

As a big fan of Basecamp (we've been using it for Digital Web's editorial calendar, etc and it's been great) I like the new redesigned page as it seems to satisfy what seems to be your underlying goal of "better selling" of Basecamp.

I do think the older page was a bit text heavy, but the nice thing about the new design is that it "shows" rather than "tells" but at the same time there is plenty of info for the interested reader.

Nice job.

01 Jul 2004 | JF said...

Damn Jason, you guys are full of all kinds of good stuff today.

FYI, this was Ryan's doing.

01 Jul 2004 | Mike said...

I think I'm going to second that point about the images being blurry.

I really liked the crisp illustration-type quality to the images on the old homepage, maybe bring that sort of style to the top of the redesigned homepage? I think the zoomed-in focus that someone else mentioned would really be cool, maybe a close-cropped screenshot of someone editing an entry, or filling out a to-do list, or something.

Also, the top horizontal navigation looks a bit naked without color directly underneath it (like on all other 37s pages), so that stunted me visually a bit. I'm thinking like a super light green box around it to go along with the green for the screenshots but that's just me :)

02 Jul 2004 | pb said...

I think I agree with someone that showing the relevant portion of a page is better than the whole screen shot.

02 Jul 2004 | Douglas said...

What strikes me is the desaturation gradient - going from intense green to white. Perhaps it is just me, but I'm always turned off by them. It doesn't fit with your other pages - the green is too distracting. This is probably another factor behind people complaining about the screenshots: the green is distracting and drains importance from them.

Douglas

02 Jul 2004 | RMCox said...

Ah crap. In two weeks time I'd planned on rolling out a new site with a similar wireframe (with big text and three highlight "boxes", basecamphq looks better of course too) and now I'm gonna look like a basecamp ripper-offer. Damn you* and your totally unrelated only slightly similar looking well-executed website redesign!

* for demonstration purposes only

02 Jul 2004 | nathan said...

The two columns are way too busy. You've got "new" icons, headlines, bold body copy, highlighted body copy, link underlines, bold link underlines, bullets, super tiny "key features" copy, etc... It's almost like every type device used elsewhere in the 37signals family has been shoehorned into this page. See how the Q&A area is also dense, but is more readable and informative?

I'd say lose the green column, simplify all remaining copy, and maybe use a pricing table to clarify the "free" to "premium" spectrum.

Is "sign-up with no-risk today! today." a typo?

All that being said, the overall look is good, and totally in line with 37signals quality.

02 Jul 2004 | Jamie said...

This is turning into the 37Signals version of 'Hot or Not".

03 Jul 2004 | an unimpressed dmr said...

"Want to see what we can do for you in a week? Check out 37express our 1-page redesign in a week service."

Unless you actually contact them to do work, and they don't respond for weeks on end. Then you contact again via email, and again via phone, and again via voice mail and email, then they reply and say they are too busy to take the job.

03 Jul 2004 | Worried said...

Overall, I think the new page is a much greater improvement over the old, and it's some good way of advertising again 37express.

Considering that the Basecamp site is a brand new site, then any potential client should be worried that 37signals will not get the job done right the first time...

03 Jul 2004 | Randy said...

Considering that the Basecamp site is a brand new site, then any potential client should be worried that 37signals will not get the job done right the first time...

Interesting viewpoint but it seems flawed to me. Nothing is every perfect or as good as it can be. I suspect the "old/original" Basecamp site was doing just fine. 37s just wanted to make it better. I'm sure they learned a few things and made the necessary tweaks. Nothing bad about that at all. I wish more companies would follow their lead actually.

05 Jul 2004 | Joe Clark said...

Love those 215 validation errors.

Were you trying to set a record?

06 Jul 2004 | p said...

did you charge yourselves $2500?